 my colleague. Thank you. Yeah, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jops Kühler. I'm the head of the Integration and Migrant Training Unit. Unfortunately, our colleague Liz Wohn, who was going to be present to present the opening remarks is unavailable, so you have to make with me. I first of all, it's a great pleasure to welcome you to the third Global Diaspora Virtual Exchanges. I'm delighted to open this flagship initiative coordinated by IOM through iDiaspora and key global partners. In 2020, the first virtual exchanges focused on the response to the pandemic. Through these webinars, diasporas were able to share best practices and how they responded to COVID-19 through prevention, protection, relief and recovery interventions. Through these virtual exchanges, nearly 300 stakeholders, including diaspora leaders, policymakers, academics and social workers were able to learn and share relevant lessons to better engage their diaspora members when responding to the global health crisis. In 2021, iDiaspora, the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism, the Center for Research on North America and the Africa-Europe Diaspora Development Platform, co-organized the second Global Diaspora Exchanges to respond to the common challenges highlighted with diaspora members, such as the lack of trust, difficulties regarding fundraising and long-term sustainable initiatives. The exchanges explored best practices across the regions and unpacked concerns and opportunities in supporting diasporas to reach their full potential. Last year, we had the pleasure of learning directly about the needs and concerns of diasporas through the Global Diaspora Week, organized by the Global Diaspora Confederation. In these sessions, diaspora communities highlighted their desire to enhance the communication skills through the project cycle, from pitching stage to the monitoring and evaluation phase. As a result, this year's Global Diaspora Virtual Exchanges will focus on communication skills strategies and tools to boost development. By sharing their best practices and tips on how to make a pitch to donors, how to deliver strategic messages during the implementation of their projects and how to use specific digital tools, we aim to accelerate diasporas' capacities and conditions to create innovative, transformative and sustainable solutions. By partnering with diasporas and enhancing their capacities in open, collaborative environments like this one, we are collectively accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals and objective 19 of the Global Compact for safe, orderly and regular migration on creating conditions for migrants and diasporas to fully contribute to sustainable developments in all countries. I'm very happy to witness the convening role of IOM in bringing together diaspora organizations to share their experiences and best practices. Moreover, I'm also particularly thrilled to welcome in these exchanges young members of the diaspora. Last year, IOM in coordination with the UN Office of the Secretary-General's Use on Enroy launched the first Global Initiatives Acknowledging and Targeting Young Diaspora Leaders on iDiaspora. The initiative included 10 interviews with exceptional young leaders from global diasporas who are passionate and motivated to continue supporting their communities to achieve concrete SDGs. By recognizing the unique role and perspectives of young diaspora leaders, this virtual exchange also aims to bring together young and more experienced members of the diaspora to share their views and knowledge and how to communicate efficiently to maximize their outreach and impact and to bridge the so-called generational gap. I look forward to hearing more from diaspora organizations and how IOM and partners can continue collaborating towards the acceleration of the Agenda 2013. Thank you very much. I now give the floor to Anna Gutierrez, founder of Bernadilla podcast, who will be moderating this session. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Jobs. Thank you, everyone who's joining today. I'm very, very happy to be here moderating this event that I think is so important for those who are working in the diaspora, trying to build a community in the diaspora. So I have the order to present the three speakers that we have today that are bringing a lot of experience to share. So I'm going to start with Dr. Ujden Nehri, from Migration for Development Unit Director. She's a doctor in urban planning, design, and policy from Politecnico di Milano, as an ad is an expert in using information and communication technology to manage organizational processes and face crisis. She's currently the Director of Migration and Developing Unit of the Organization of the Tunisian Diaspora in Italy, where she oversees the development of strategies and policies for institutional reforms, particularly in the context of international migration, processes decentralization, and management of health crisis. Since 2015, she has worked in Tunisia's development projects as a supervisor and knowledge transfer facilitator for several training courses in public health governance, institutional communication, support for entrepreneurship, and migration management. So welcome, welcome to our event today. I'm going to finish presenting our guests, and then we move to the questions. We also have Victoria Sagitova, who works for youth advocate and communications lead at NYCP. She's the main expertise. Her main expertise is building communications in the humanitarian sector. As a communication specialist, she worked with organizations such as NESCO, ITU, WWF, UNHR Carders, and others. At the moment, she's a communications lead at NYCP. Moreover, she's a social media blogger and activist with the Young and Hired Project, which has helped tens of thousands of young people around the world find a career path and fulfill themselves in the new digital realities of the world after the pandemic. She's graduated in European and global studies from the University of Daigle Studi Dipadova with Boston University and Science Pro Paris. Thank you very much for joining us today, Victoria. And last but not least, we have Dr. Jessica Hamatziripi, who is the Director of Genesis Entrepreneurship Trust, GET. She's also a holder of a PhD in international relations and diplomacy. Her thesis topic is poverty eradication in Zimbabwe, meeting the millennium development goals through home grow business approaches. The thesis was published in 2013 by Lejar Matan. She's a trained entrepreneur with practical experience in managing business ventures. She also has vast experience working in academic institutions, namely the University of Zimbabwe, and a species college in Harare, Zimbabwe, and at Pace University White Plains in New York, America, mostly in administration and as a trainer of management courses. In line with her academic experience, she worked as a research assistant at the International Trade Center in Geneva. She also believes that absolute poverty should be eradicated in Zimbabwe and Africa as a whole, in light of all the vast resources that exist in the continent. As well, she's deeply touched by the social and psychological effects that affect people due to absolute poverty and other social ills. She believes that by working together with other stakeholders, the general populace may enjoy their livelihoods. Her passion for eradicating absolute poverty has led her to start and manage a nonprofit trust called Genesis Entrepreneurship Trust, GED. She believes that youth in Zimbabwe can be trained to be effective entrepreneurs. GED is an organization that equips youth between the age of 18 and 35 with entrepreneurial skills to enable them to start and manage profitable businesses. GED was registered in 2016 and started training in 2017. So these are amazing speakers that we have for today. I want to welcome them. Maybe they want to say like a quick hi before we start. But if I don't think Jessica just updated her microphone, do you want to say something before we start officially, Jessica? I just want to say good afternoon and thank you very much for having me. No, thank you for being with us today. So we're going to start a round of questions. We have four main questions that we want to discuss throughout this conversation today. But if you guys have any questions, can you please start putting them in the chat so we're going to be monitoring and when the time comes, we're going to try to answer as many of them as we can. So our first question for today is one of the key skills that a communicator needs to have when approaching donors and delivering a pitch, which is something very important when you're starting to build a community, when you're starting an initiative. So let's start with you then. What can you tell us from your experience, please? Let's give her a second. There we go. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for this invitation. So I will attempt to convey my experience in dealing with donors for this first question. I think that it is quite impossible to separate excellent preparation of the content of your message when you are carrying it to donors from control of nonverbal communication. Such a good body posture, engaging and confident tone of voice and eye contact, you know, the classical aspects of good communication. Nonverbal communication will come naturally if you are well versed in your project and if you can effectively communicate your project verbally. So you should master the idea of your project and it is not so easy as it seems to be. I advise you to advise our audience, the people who want to develop this skill to create a strong vision of your project and to assimilate this idea, this vision, very well before you go for giving your pitch. Possibly by repeating your speech numerous times with your colleagues before the meeting asking yourself what should the donor ask me and what he's expecting. And it is important to be at the place of the donor in this case because the broad goal of your project and the impact of the project. We speak a lot about this in communication. It means how it will affect the beneficiaries. These are the two first things that the donor wants to hear from you. So they will also want to know the types of beneficiaries you have in mind. You are those who know better than anyone who you are speaking, what you are speaking about. So if your project is going to work on a specific group of people, be aware to be very specific when you pitch. And to have in mind what actions will be carried out in order to go to this impact shortly but straightforward to your impact. If you don't have much experience, I know as a representative of a diaspora organization, when we began working with donors, international donors, it was very difficult to show that we have experience since we were a young organization. So if you don't have much experience working on this kind of project that you are going to pitch, you need to assure the donor that your organization and your partnership have the necessary human resources and the in-depth knowledge of the issue. This is essential in your pitch. Don't forget that the donor needs to be convinced that the action will be carried out correctly. This is the main point. So I advise to come prepared to this meet, this kind of meeting with well-defined ideas as well as a written CV for your organization that highlights your experience. And if you don't have experience because it's a young organization, as I said, your privileged knowledge of the local context, don't forget that you are a diaspora organization. So you have very specific characteristics of which we are going to speak during this meeting and that we have to highlight, we have to show. And so this potential and peculiar vision that you have of your local community in your home country or of the migrant community with which you are working or general community with whom you want to work. So these are some general advices that I would like to share with you now. And as you have realized, it's at the end that you can discuss of money with donors. So after speaking about your project, the donation is the last element that you have to discuss with them. At least in our experience, we saw that the matter is about having a nice and good idea of our project and going to show that we want to make it succeed with the good partners and with a clear vision of the actions that we want to do. So discussing money with donors is the last thing to do. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. It's very important. I hope everyone is taking notes. And I would like before we proceed just to let you guys know that in the bottom there is you can find like a sign that says interpretation so you can listen also to our participants in Spanish and in French if that's a language you feel more comfortable listening to these experts talking today. Let's go now with Victoria. What are the skills that a communicator needs to have when approaching donors and delivering a pitch? Thank you very much for having me here first of all. So it's really a great pleasure for me to speak today and to communicate. So I think that for now for communicating it's really very important to understand also how our digital world works because of certain things and certain events that have happened in the world. We saw how important it is also to understand how online communications work. That's why in our work what we are trying to do is always to try to elevate our social media expertise. Unfortunately in the humanitarian sector usually a lot of organizations has various cars budget and not enough resources in order to conduct effective communications. That's why I think that what is really important in this kind of situation is to try to understand how the social media algorithms work because if you understand how this magic is working so it can really open you the doors to so many things. For example what what can be really relevant today in 2023 is to for example pay attention to the video content instead of photos for example or long text try to to make the text shorter as much as possible and to think also about packaging so like it needs to be a content that is visually engaging at the same time something very short. Another important thing is for example to think how viral content works so for example we with MICP we have a campaign that is called everybody knows something that you don't know and I invite you to look at this where we are posting different video content that is absolutely one of the content that can go viral today and we are posting it on TikTok and absolutely without any additional support or any tools I mean target advertisements or something we are getting more than 1000 views all around the world with this kind of video and what is helping us to get these numbers is exactly because we understand how the social media algorithms work that's why if you're also in this kind of situation so I really invite you to try to understand what is trendy today what kind of content can go viral what kind of things is better to to create because of course like not everybody has a lot of time to create and content creating is not an easy task of course and another important thing that I wanted to mention is also think always like where you deliver your message so if you want to who you want to target and where your target audience lives so on which social platform it is for example we are working with young people a lot so that's why of course we are targeting them on the platforms like TikTok where we can get the very high percentage of this kind of audience thank you very much thank you so much Victoria let's go with Dr. Jessica yes hello good afternoon hi so let me just repeat the question because there are some people who are just joining now to the to the Zoom what are the key skills that communicator needs to have when approaching donors and delivering a pitch I would like to first thank you very much for inviting me to this meeting one thing I've learned over the years is that the skills do change over generations and over decades when I was growing up in the village in Zimbabwe the skills that I needed to be a good communicator is totally different from when I worked in the states and totally different now during post COVID-19 so I would like to start by saying that it is very important to understand the donor where they are best in their basic culture understanding because when you're going to approach a donor here in South Africa where I'm currently based it's totally different like when I approach IOM for example so I've got to really understand the donor that I'm approaching and then adapt to what the donor expects from me having said that I would also like to say that it is important to create a vision a good vision that the donor can buy into because without a good vision it is different difficult for a donor to want to engage into a partner with any beneficial applicant so as a development actor in the diaspora I believe that it is important that one is going to be clear in their objective express the objective on the objective understand and express it clearly because without expressing the objective in a good vision it is difficult to convince the donor so in order to be able to convince the donor it takes of course like some of the earlier speakers said good expressive ways in expressing what one is trying to achieve and it is important to have the confidence to own the project one is trying to sell to the donor remember that when we are pitching we are pitching in order for them to buy into the idea that one intends to get support for so it is very important that one has good listening skills and to be attentive because then that helps to to the energy flowing between the donor and the applicant wanting their support from the donor it is important also to use technology when approaching the donors you cannot just keep on talking for 20 minutes one needs to use the appropriate technology whether it's a virtual application or whether it's first to first application then one is going to choose which technology works better for them in order to be able to get the donors buy into the vision it is very important to be persuasive in a good way when a certain genesis in thepreneurship trust gets so emotional at the beginning I would want everybody to see how desperate the youth were which at times it doesn't make sense because they cannot associate with what I see on the ground so it is important just to be able to be persuasive and have empathy as well but without using certain expressions emotional expressions which at times don't work in other cultures so it's very important to try and understand what works at an international level in order to have those skills and be able to express them properly thank you very much thank you so much Jessica I think we got very important like recommendations here and how to approach our donors I would like to highlight like three things that I got like from each one and maybe for those who are just joining us they can like catch up a bit I think it was very important to that you mentioned the monies at the end sometimes when we're like asking for funding we go straight with like hey I need this kind of money but maybe first build a relationship and then you know like put the numbers on the table also the use of social media that nowadays Victoria mentioned it it's so so important sometimes and I myself included we want to stick to like Facebook and that's it but whether we like it or not or audience can be in different platforms and we need to like adjust what we are making like the content to different platforms and also by last what Jessica was mentioning about the cultural differences it's different how you pitch something in the western wall in the global south it depends who you're talking to like how you can build that up so that was very very good recommendations and we're going to go to our second question for today what are the skills and characteristics what skills and characteristics make diaspora communities unique communicators so we're going to go the other way around so I'm going to catch Jessica by surprise and let's start with Jessica this time hello uh thank you I will start by hearing a quote from I'll read it from Matt Sanborn uh I caught in teamwork silence isn't golden it's deadly and quotes so uh the skills and characteristics are important in the sense that it is important to be able to express oneself uh in the communities for diasporas experience of other cultures we we have is that diasporas the opportunity to um as unique communicators because with the experience of how other cultures are set up each culture is different at times you find that even within a country cultures are very different so it is important then to understand that is diasporas we have the experience of other cultures and it makes us unique communicators because we can draw our experiences and how to communicate based on what we've learned from other cultures apart from our own cultures I would also like to say generally speaking I would say that diasporas have the diversity of understanding the different groups of people so it makes us unique communicators in the sense that we are able to tolerate other groups of people more than somebody who has never had the exposure of interacting with the diasporas at times you actually see if they are different it's difficult then to tolerate them it's difficult to engage them so as diasporas I believe that the exposure that we've had from interacting with other groups of people in other cultures makes diasporas unique communicators because we are able to tolerate we are able to adapt adaptability is critical because without that is very difficult because as we engage different people with the diversity that we have in this 21st century we need to be adaptable we need to understand why the other groups are believing we need to understand the backgrounds and other cultures of other people and then adapt accordingly so because of that reason I believe that as diasporas or people with great exposure to work with diasporas are able to be better unique communicators because you cannot communicate what you don't know you can have the knowledge yes we're talking of the skills earlier on but then to be able to do that you need that knowledge and I think the knowledge in this case also for diasporas comes with a practical experience which makes it even easier to be able to convince because it's one of the key things in today's world you need to be able to convince and to influence ideas and to be able to put across one's beliefs and ideas and as diasporas I think we have that unique experience which can make us good communicators in any culture that we are able to live in or to visit because without which then becomes very difficult thank you very much thank you so much Jessica it was very very important what you just mentioned let's go with Victoria what skills and characteristics make diaspora communities unique communicators thank you very much it was really really very great and inspiring what Jessica just has said indeed I also absolutely agree that what makes us be unique is that we are incredibly tolerant and we are very open to different ideas and I also wanted to highlight this kind of global view that we as communicators have because another thing that we always see is that when we communicate and when we form this kind of key messages that we want to spread I see it also in our team that this like different cultural by ground the fact that we are from like we have different diasporas gives us this global view that helps us actually to speak about global things and notice them because we are not just existing in one community or in one circle and this is amazing because we raise different topics and our content becomes more unique indeed unique because it's more interesting it's more diverse and we are just living this diversity through our content and at the same time I think that from the like communications point of view it's even greater because it gives us a very great scope of things we can raise and speak about online and offline when we communicate at the same time another thing what I find absolutely strong here in unique is the fact that we can communicate in different languages so we and this like fact of course makes us be global so we are not just finding we are we can not just like find our target audience on different platforms but at the same time we are community can communicate in different languages and target even more people and spread our message to more people so I think that these two things so to conclude this global view and the fact of being multilingual are really very strong and make us be unique in our content creating when we communicate messages thank you very much thank you Victoria it's very very important you're mentioning as well for those who just joined we're talking about what skills and characteristics makes diaspora communities unique communicators we're going to go now we do stand well thank you to Jessica and Victoria for I think that I will build on their contributions so I learned a concept from my colleague Afef Haji who is a psychologist also from our diaspora organization Pontes she explained to us what was the cultural code switching and I would like to to share with you this this skill that I think is a highly valuable skill of diaspora communities that we should promote and Jessica was speaking about it Victoria also when we speak about the how many languages we know and how we are aware about cultural differences actually the cultural code switching goes further to explain who we are and how can we also work in a different way so what we said before our uniqueness as communities who are acting in the civil society arena so as many of you know the technique of changing one's behavior communication style or cultural standards to fit into a different culture setting or scenario this is cultural code switching and for instance it occurs when a person converses in one language at home but then shifts to another language or different languages when speaking with colleagues or friends from a different cultural background it is also practiced by those who adapt their appearance their attitude or manners to fit in with the customs or of another society or situation the society of origin so when I go back home to Tunisia I usually of course speak in a different language but all the code of my behaving is adapted to the way we live in Tunisia with our families within working also and so on and this is a richness I think that it sounds familiar to most of you each time we switch from between the settings where we interact with our countries of origin in our organizations speaking with the institutional partners speaking with as I said Jessica before when she is with a donor in South Africa it's not the same thing as speaking with a donor in Europe maybe and in our countries of residence so we always engage in cultural code switching and within our communities there are many persons who are able to understand and appreciate the perspectives of people from different cultural backgrounds and and we are able most of us I'm speaking about the people who are working in the diaspora organization who are engaged in a civil society we are used to adjust our behavior and our communication style according to whom we are speaking with and where we are so the cultural code switching for me can be a way to navigate very complex social situations to build good relationships and to establish connections between people from different cultural backgrounds it can also be a way let's say to show respect for other cultures when we include them in our vision of our actions of our projects so putting people together and to show that there is also cultural competence among our young generations by belonging to multicultural settings so I think that building on this capacity we can promote really the role of diaspora communities to contribute to more effective cross-cultural communication in our experience as a diaspora organization between Italy and Tunisia we have been activating these skills that we have in a translating situation in explaining situations between partners from north and south in negotiating in clarifying some misconceptions misunderstandings so our role as diasporas when we speak about bridging maybe it is also a part of the skill that we have and that we should promote and to carry out in order to make our transnational actions more impactful emotional intelligence multilingual cultural awareness empathy all these aspects all these abilities are part of something that we do every day switching from a culture to another so let's say that I think that we can build on this and to improve our abilities of switching from cultures in order to bridge with our actions at the transnational level thank you so much it was beautiful but the three of you just said just to sum it up for those who are just joining we're talking about what are those what make us a unique you know as diaspora communities we started without the fact that we have like the combination of our culture from our homeland from where we came from and the culture where we're living in right now we also talk about a bit about like the global view we have right because you can mix it up what you learn or what are you exposing when you go home and what you're exposing the country that you are now and we didn't make it like beautifully all together talking about this switch right because you switch to like one brain for this and then you change to the other and I think it was beautifully put together to close this question thank you so much for those who are joining just now on the bottom you have a bottom that says interpretation if you wish to listen to this conversation in French or in Spanish we have those options and we're going to go through our third question of today why are interpersonal sorry yes that's a question I got confused for a second here why are interpersonal skills relevant to deliver impactful messages and again which then is your turn because we're going around the table okay you move by surprise I want to keep you on your toes you know everyone has to be in their toes today yes okay thank you so when I read this this question I thought it was very general because interpersonal skills is the part that completes the message you know in order to have an impact when you communicate your message it means that you have good information to to to share to try to convince with to assure or reassure someone with an idea but the interpersonal skills contain many aspects for our discussion I would like to underline two interpersonal skills that I think maybe are important for an effective communication the the first one is was before underlined by Jessica she was speaking about the ability to actively listen and I had to learn this ability when I was when I was student I remember that I was obliged to listen to my professors then when I became a professor my students were obliged to listen to me and of course there is a protocol in this communication but when we are speaking about the diaspora communities moving in between words what does it mean to to be a good listener we can think about the adaptation of the message to the audience requirements as said Jessica before in order to understand what the person in front of you needs you need to to listen to to it I we said that before before with donors what is expecting the donor is he expecting me to to convince him about the relevance of my project I need to understand what is he expecting so I need to listen and to hear what is he saying because sometimes I need to adjust with the agenda of my donor this was the first question but our experience taught us that effective listening to institutional partners particularly those in Tunisia is essential for the success of the collaboration and by extension of our projects so I advise you to not to bring a project that has been finished written and is ready for the partners to be signed instead a good strategy to develop trust because here we are speaking about delivering impactful messages and the result that we want to to arrive to is to build trust with the person who is our interlocutor so a good strategy to build this trust is to pay attention to their demands and then to negotiate whether or not they may be incorporated into the project another situation where active listening is crucial is during social media communication efforts when you are working on social media on your web Facebook pages and among your community maybe through a campaign that you are developing for a wireless campaign or to to to collect donations or whatever the community manager's job is crucial to understand to listen to people's communications need so to interpret what is saying the person who is commenting my my post of course here in order to spot the disruptive users and that we need to ignore and to find out which are the real communications needs who are the people we need to speak to because they emerge when we are in social media and we discover usually new typologies of persons who with whom we can interact the other interpersonal skill I would like to highlight is the positive attitude actually when I began working in civil society in this work people were always saying you are very enthusiastic you are always positive you are always optimistic and it was sometimes something that looks like more a disadvantage or maybe something that was not going well correctly and actually I understood why people tell me this because I learned in this in this word of the diaspora civil society that I don't stop in problems and issues because in the first years I was working in this arena we were coming always with problems and issues we have all these problems with all we have all these issues and then our meetings with other organizations with international organizations and so on finished always in collecting the demands the problems but afterwards this idea of positive attitude that I would like to underline here it doesn't mean only to be to be to smile and to think positive no it's not this is the idea but the point is that in some way as diasporic groups or organization we are frequently seen as the ones carrying the solutions so not those who are only sharing the problems and the issues and if we want really to be impactful in our work maintaining a positive attitude in communication can offer really a lot of advantages because it will promote a more optimistic and productive environment and it will aid in developing connection with the people in front of you and also it will ease the tension and anxiety of the many problems we have to solve and we want to face and discussing about issues and problems of course it's called is crucial but only as the first step they should help us to identify needs and then develop solutions so this is what I would say I would call positive attitudes in our work so speaking about issues trying to find together some solutions and then share sharing these solutions with others it opens really good streets to develop to act to change perfect beautiful very well said thank you very much we're going to go with Desika now yes hello the interpersonal skills relevant to deliver impactful messages I will start by what I always tell my the team that I work with in Genesis entrepreneurship trust I always say to them you can't read my mind neither can I read your mind so which means one is going to express oneself it's very important to communicate whether it's in writing or whether it's verbal at times also non-verbal it depends with the situation and the occasion so I would like to say the the interpersonal skills are important and relevant because one is able to express themselves without expressing oneself then it becomes difficult we can only make impact when we express ourselves so when we deal with development actors or donors it is important that we express ourselves so that the people that we interact with can understand the message or the idea that we are sharing with them I would also like to say that the importance of the relevance of the interpersonal skills they build good relationships you know they create relationships as we share ideas as we need to work together in the diaspora the diasporans have to share ideas they have to network in order to make meaningful messages in order to make impact with the messages that we want to share amongst ourselves as diasporas or with other development actors so impact comes when we open up and we have the platform to make discussions to share with each other then we are able to make impacts with the messages that we want to share with the ideas that we want to share the knowledge the experiences we can only do so through building relationships through expressing ourselves and sharing with one another I would like to say also the relevance of interpersonal skills they bring about a human touch as we share our ideas we are able to make more impact when we create that human touch uh my understanding many years ago when I went to uh to university I believe I think it was psychology 101 uh that you know we we are social uh beings and therefore for that reason we strive also to build relationships in the process of development and as we do that also we need to understand that we have to create a situation where our projects show the human touch what we are trying to achieve for other people or in this case also it can be the environment or it can be climate change or whatever but whatever it is that we are trying to strive always keeping like I mentioned uh during my first presentation keeping uh the vision and the objective of one's organization but it has to make sense to the other humans as we try to express to each other so I believe that it is important that the interpersonal skills uh not only uh requires just to talk like I'm talking now but like uh Ujitan expressed earlier it takes attentive listening we've got to be able to listen to each other listening is one of the most difficult things at least for me it was very hard you know because I'd always want to be the one who is talking but it took a lot of training and understanding that in society in this globalization and among its development actors we have to allow each other to be able to also to listen to share ideas at times either just as a new idea or as a way of emphasizing ideas because at times we are able to develop better when we emphasize and important ideas because it's very easy to lose an idea as we share different ideas on a daily basis but I think it also takes um what can I say uh equality to be able to trap those good ideas in the emphasize on them because it is important in the personal skill to be able to trap on the ideas of others and be able to uh either advance those ideas or maybe either to express them and share with others and uh whether it's um through the social media through technology whatever way it is possible I think it is important for us as diasporas to understand that we can be able to develop as we understand the ideas and develop on those ideas and express and to support one another in those ideas thank you very much thank you very much Jessica let's go with Victoria thank you very much indeed what was saying about like active listening and I want to just like take it from here I remember that when I was studying at university there was a project that was called Solia and during that project the idea was that while you're speaking other people can not switch on the microphone so this function was just blocked even if you wanted to jump up you couldn't because there was like a timer that you should have spoken and the interesting part is that the Solia founders knew that the the project works like this that like when you're speaking other people cannot speak and then they were asking for feedback they were saying can you please tell us what we can improve in the Solia project what can be better and usually all the participants including me was saying everything is perfect the the the thing is cool because the idea was that you are speaking with people with different from different cultures and from different countries and everybody was saying the project is amazing it's cool to exchange ideas but the microphone function is just terrible because you cannot speak and say something and then when we finished the project the founder said but that was idea to teach you to listen actively because when somebody telling you the story we always want to jump and say something else without actively listening so at the end of the project you understood what the skill means and indeed this is what is building a very effective communication yeah because you'll listen because I think that the the sector we're working in is incredibly hard why because we are working with so many differences we all are incredibly different and diverse and of course we all at the same time are human beings yeah like if we are communicating we cannot be ideal and say we can communicate it in the most diverse and tolerant way in the world of course we are learning every day how to do that and there are things that we find more important that can be maybe less important for other people and in this case of course those like interpersonal skills as active learning or some other things like for example empathy while you are empathetic about other people and you listen to other people are incredibly important some other things and what I really find important is teamwork as an interpersonal skill because as I said our sector is incredibly hard and what I find that I'm MICP all the time incredibly encouraging is that even those like hard days when you have when you see that there are other people believing that the same mission and the same idea it's incredibly inspiring because you understand that together you can build it together you can go forward and having other people around and having this teamwork is incredibly effective of course so that's why of course like these interpersonal skills are basically is I would say that it's like a basis for working yeah it's like the values that you are having as a person that is moving the project forward and that's why I find this incredibly important and again because we are we are people and we are working for other people and of course like understanding other human beings in this kind of work is incredibly important thank you very much for thank you also like for actively listening to me that was good that was very good actually I just like Victoria had a class about conflict resolution and we had this active listening thingy where a professor would tell us like share share something with your partner so we'll tell them something I did this this and that and the partner will have to answer so you're saying I would repeat everything we said and we're like that's so silly but when we did that the rehearsal we realized that we would miss some stuff like I would say abnc and when my partner would repeat it to me he would say just bnc because for some reason he didn't like actually pay attention to a so he was like you see you're not listening actively like so for all all of these like interpersonal skills that these amazing women have shared with us we have obviously the active listening that's like very clear for everyone that we need to practice the active listening but we also need to communicate correctly just verbally and also like our physical moves you know how we communicate verbally and non-verbally and third the Victoria Mensha is a teamwork which is very very important to know how to work in teams obviously people like you know it's easy to be in your corner working by yourself but when we work with diaspora when we work in communications we do need to know how to work in teams so those are some interpersonal skills we can start practicing ourselves everyone here and we're going to go with our last question before we open the debate for everyone who has joined today's Zoom and we're going to start with Victoria obviously so what which channels of communication are the most effective yeah thank you very much I'm happy to start with this I also by the way share it on the doc maybe if it's possible to share on the screen like one little infographic so like if it's technically possible that's going to be great if not it's okay I can still try to explain I can look for it while you're like yeah great so I think my answer will be incredibly short and incredibly simple the most effective channels are the ones where your target audience leaves so the only task and the only piece of advice that I would love to give is before communicating think twice and analyze where you can find your target audience because in this case you can not burn out because you will not like put all your efforts into all the channels possible what is sometimes also good and at the same time of course you can be more effective in the short period of time and some things that are helping us for example is that we are always analyzing social media platforms and we are looking at the demographics and I wanted to show you one of the examples of the demographics I just put the thing on the screen you can see it now exactly yeah I can also see that thank you very much for this for example we can see like some demographics for different platforms that are online platforms because of course when we speak about communication platforms they can be also offline yeah we can speak about different like media as traditional media as newspapers like tv and others for example I'm showing you one of the examples of social media platforms where you can see the demographics and what is important is also like to look for this year because this kind of market is incredibly challenging and competitive and those platforms that were on top for certain target audience is absolutely maybe not on top today and for example for us for the work of mICP the youth the youth cluster is incredibly important so we are targeting a lot young people that's why of course what we are doing is for example we are going actively and what we have done this year is we went on tiktok we what helps us to target the audience that we to whom we can communicate the value that we are doing our mission and to engage this kind this target audience into our activities yeah for example at the same time on the screen you can see that instagram is also like one of those like platforms where we actively go because there are millennials and the target audience that we need at the same time for like those who want to target for example more like older audience they can go to them platforms like facebook or linkedin and so on and this kind of analysis is just a little unfortunately piece of the analysis that can be done why because they're also like some regional differences in different regions there are different social uh different platforms and for example if we look at the asia market we see that absolutely different platforms exist there and those platforms that are absolutely actively used on the european region is not so actively used maybe even in america so if we i can give you provide you another example if we if you ask an american so how do you message yeah like so uh they would probably tell you that uh they don't use whatsapp that is so actively widespread for example in europe but they would go for a message yeah what is like an internal apple platform uh so um concluding uh i just my advice would be is that it's incredibly important to do the analysis of those channels of communications before uh thinking about communicating the messages that you want to communicate in this case you would uh put the efforts and resources in the right way from the beginning thank you very much thank you very much uh let's go we jessica yes thank you um i would like to start saying that um when i first came to south africa i had already started genesis entrepreneurship trust since i'm the founder and director and the concern at that time was uh how are you going to do it since you're going to be in south africa how are we going to continue yet we want this organization to continue and this was a question that was posed by several people uh in the communities that will impact the youth to empower the youth with entrepreneurial skills some authorities that will work with even some trainers so for me i just said okay uh we will try whatsapp because that's what is very popular in simba way so i was going to try and do whatsapp and then we take it up from there then first forward covid 19 came it became much easier for me to then say okay it becomes easier we can do zoom meetings we can do zoom training i can record messages and you can play them you know enter youth projectors so that you know people can see who i am but prior to covid 19 it was a different scenario altogether so i'd like to say yes covid 19 was very difficult but i think it has opened a lot of possibilities on what we can do not just in terms of communication but other ways other possible things that we can improve on but because we are talking about communication it has really made communication much easier especially in our organization even the way that we are able to approach donors or the way we are able to engage with other people in the diaspora you find that it's no longer listed people are willing to accept it here we are in different places in the world and we are having this meeting before covid 19 it was not that obvious so i would like to say that the effective communication channels also are dependent on the message that we are trying to communicate that different platforms as victoria already explained that it depends based on intergenerational people who are involved in a project and it depends with the cultures as well so i think it is equally important just to understand the the group of for the audience that one would like to address and choose the correct mode of channel to communicate that message you find that now these days it is important to be traceable traceability is of utmost importance whether one is traceable through a website whether one is traceable through uh uh twitter or other social medias it has become very important because we are not engaging face to faces before so at least they need to have some degree of traceability in order to understand that first and foremost yes you are dealing with people not a robot and secondly to understand for people then to have exposure and understand what the other person is doing or what the organization is doing because without traceability it becomes difficult so it is important for those in their diaspora as they approach donors to pitch or to communicate the vision or the objectives of what they are trying to do they has to be a certain degree of traceability even in the way we speak of best practices in the way of the policies that we have in the organization you've got to be able to communicate those we've got to be able to express those to share with the potential donors because without those best practices it becomes difficult in this uh meeting you say that we are here to empower each other to share best practices so that's why i'm bringing this up because without that possibility then it becomes difficult because most people we don't meet uh physically but we meet through e meetings we meet through virtual meetings so for that reason it is important that we have uh documents which we are willing to share openly and quickly not that a donor will ask for something then it takes days on end to submit it so we have to have our policies and our best practices in place so that we are able to share with them uh another way of communicating channel which I only grasped this year I'm a little bit slower when it comes to communication the social influencers I had no idea the power that they have globally so it is important for us to understand that we can also adapt to some of these new possibilities the new ways that are coming up and then see how best we can use them as channels of communication understanding whom we want to talk to and understanding uh the not only just the audience but you know the the way we're operating in organization so I'd like to uh also suggest that we adaptable to the different ways channels of communication as they come up and see what we can include and what we can't include we can only develop as diasporas through communication and through collaboration thank you thank you very much Jessica uh let's go with you then thank you um yeah I think that most most important aspects have been faced by Victoria and Jessica before me so I would switch maybe to the content of the messages and which are the channels of communication that are most effective for different contents of course what you said before is crucial we need to to tailor the channels to the intended audience to find people where they are some persons are not even online we have been working in the last months through we were we were making a survey uh in Tunisia and it was sent online to the surveyors and they were going all through the the country and the the the survey was as I said online but the problem was to to to find the connection in some areas in Tunisia to access to to the survey so we couldn't also send it to some persons who are living in some areas because of this gap of course we speak about the digitalized word so we adapt to to to where our people are in order to reach them and as we are diaspora also I would like to say before entering in the in the examples that I would like to share with you from our experience is that we are somewhere else we are diaspora groups so we are according to our countries we are abroad when we go working in our countries for development actions uh home countries we are distant from our residence countries so the fact to be transnational as people as the actions and as a cooperation also for example our organization Pontus has Pontus Tunisia so we have been working in the last 10 years with our colleagues in Tunisia who are also from different generations through virtual teams really before covid and each time we wanted to to fix a uh a meeting with with them they were asking if we were coming to Tunisia but actually we were organizing skype meetings at time there was not zoom or google meet so uh and they they learned little bit they learned and we learned also how to organize our virtual teams it was very difficult it was really very difficult to share everything online to work online to have all our folders online uh it's not because it's Tunisia let me tell you that for example in Tunisia seven point five million people are connected to facebook have a facebook actively connected to facebook and we are 10 million speed persons so 75 percent of the whole population including children who are not connected maybe to facebook that's why but all the others are actively connected to facebook so it is a very connected uh um reality but working online is different so let me let me arrive to to the to the rest as to which tunnels of communication are the most effective it depends also of what you are communicating so for internal coordination you can combine as said Jessica you can combine what's up for urgent communications and and other tools to to coordinate your work we we we learn to use for for example planning activities tools who are which are online to communicate at the internal level of the our organization like azana or there are many three uh of chart uh uh platforms uh of shared drives like google drive and so on dropbox but the official website of our organization and your organization is also important uh because it you it is usually will be accessed by potential funders and potential partners the institutional partners use this uh communication uh look for this kind of communication tools that are websites uh maybe also linkedin but the cv of your organization your brand who you are uh what are your success stories what what do you want to do uh how you can encourage donations you can do it by a website a simple website i would say not to be updated always it is just important to to have a digital identity on on internet this is a first point maybe with another organization you can share a same domain but you can also have a place in an online platform uh that is a website a facebook page uh facebook page is more useful if you want to share updates and you have a lot of content that you want to news to that you want to share but it also permits for example in the example of tunisia less for italians you uh jessica will uh veronica will say that we are boomers maybe uh we use facebook yes facebook is very important to build the community through uh the the in in in some countries and to have the diaspora communication is very interesting we we we we find a lot of communities who interact on facebook and calling themselves as diaspora groups and so we can share a lot of audience there uh in order to to share information and also to engage people in discussions we use a lot facebook when we want to uh public publish some uh sensitization and awareness campaigns it is very useful if we want to reach young people there uh we and and we need a set as you said before we need to produce contents uh i don't advise to anyone to open a profile on uh on instagram or a youtube channel or a tiktok channel if you don't have contents if you don't create videos and photos that are working for your for your purposes for your work purposes so it is a work let me finish just advising to sponsor your publication your process if you are working with it uh in uh in campaigns in organized campaigns so think about this ordinary work for communication and maybe campaigning working in your projects so i will budget i will budget sponsoring fees i will include in my budget uh fees also to pay a social media community manager this is the work you cannot do it by yourself in spontaneous way we try to do that and it doesn't function uh absolutely as you said before you you can burn out so i will conclude by saying that the best communication that i i i that that we we have is face-to-face of course but uh online communication is really effective to shorten the distances between our diaspora communities and our home countries thank you thank you so much for that i think uh among all the comments and the advice you have given us about the channels of communications we have that we need to study our social media depending on the country or the public we're targeting it's important that second i think jessica was the one who mentioned like pressability you know like if you have a name your community has a name and you mentioned the name in a meeting they have to be able to find you online right you put on google the name and it's gonna pop up like the instagram web or the website or the facebook page or your link getting account something it's gonna come up and they're gonna be like oh they exist let's see what kind of content they have and you know like create good content that is available along with a website that is like they say like a resume like a cd of who or what your organization is about so thank you so much to the three of you for these amazing amazing comments on the channels communications that we can use and now we're going to go to the second part of this uh meeting which is basically you know picking on the brains of victoria of of dame and jessica of different things that maybe you are wondering about throughout the the conversation so the chat is open you can start like leaving your questions there or if you want to like use the mic you can raise your hand and i will be calling you uh let's see you know what can we also extra things we can get out of this conversation let's see who wants to start you can like raise your hand if you prefer using the mic or you know we have the chat you can write in spanish as well in the chat uh i don't speak very good french i think jessica speak french right jessica you're on mute uh but for for this meeting i prefer to uh to handle it in english okay beautiful no no no of course of course so we can take questions in english or in spanish so let's let's start let's see who wants to who has any questions maybe some comments or what we have been discussing i want to say something of course uh parole go ahead please uh it's easier for me to speak french i i uh uh will be brief i do not speak french though that's that that's the problem i don't know and now we have the the interpretation channel so we can all switch to to french in case it's needed okay beautiful so okay so let's let's all switch to i guess english the language that you want to listen to and we're gonna hear the question now barry do you want to go ahead the uh the la turquie and it's possible that i said that global diaspora confederation thank you very much uh if i can allow me i'm just going to answer very quickly uh thank you for your comment this exchange we're going to stay more on the question of communication and how to be able to help uh with different communication tools in diaspora but we we we heard you and so i let open the word to other people who want or can answer if they want and thank you very much again for having waited for the time uh questions and answers to be able to take the word thank you thank you very much uh i don't know one of the speakers would like to address this question okay in the meantime in the meantime if anyone else have any other question something that we can you know like uh uh no take advantage of having victoria and ujiden and jessica here please feel free to write it in the chat or to raise your hand so we can call you and you can activate your mic andreina go ahead hi everyone and i'm reina sulaga and venezuela living in new york um it was really nice to be in this meeting today um i just only want to say thank you for every all this resource from the three of you sharing with us and this since this is the very first like meeting are we having these meetings like regularly or in what other way way we could like engage together and be more like and i don't know working towards our goals and sharing our experience good practices and all this meaningful resource that we had today thank you thank you so much andreina i know that you can go to idiaspora and register there so you'll get emails about the different events they organize a lot of very very important and insightful events uh there are two more diaspora exchange coming on april 17 and may the third uh so if you go to idiaspora the website you can register there and get updates everyone is i i would like invite you guys to sign in so you will get updates on the different events material all the organizations like yours that are there that you can like start building relationships and it's a good good place to exchange all the knowledge and experiences we have as diaspora uh paddy go ahead please hello everyone and uh i'm paddy sienna klutzen vice president from the global research forum on diaspora and transnationalism so part of the co-organizes of these virtual exchanges just a very a very uh hand a handout of gratitude to our panelists who've just unpacked i think what has been very interesting in terms of listening to impactful skills from from from from the diaspora and what that means i have a question um and i guess you know any of the panelists can answer us but i i also understand that we have uh nycp that's joining us also here you know an invitee from from their side and in trying to understand how do we bridge the gaps with the younger generation often we're told that um in the diaspora space when we form the more we formalize sometimes we sit we tend to move away from those that we cannot reach so we have groups of diaspora that kind of remain left behind and and and some of these include the younger generation so we're talking second generation diaspora uh and even further on that may not have that strong connection sometimes as you would have to the homeland what have been your strategies in terms of how you engage um these younger diasporas who have and would be a very important capital um in terms of the impactful skills that they would have for youth um in the space so in the countries of residence but more particularly when we talk about uh you know contributing to sustainable development back in the homelands thank you thank you paddy uh who would like to start thinking how do you have my house oh okay go ahead this is done thank you thank you paddy for this question yeah i i used the physical hand i did not find the the virtual one it's so cute it's okay it's okay i saw your hand so i was like there's a hand i'm gonna use that thank you so actually uh one of the strategies we adopted in our organization is to invite the second generation to propose what do they think about the actions we want to develop in tunisia and we opened also positions for the second generation during the the summer and to participate to our actions in tunisia and we had some young girls uh and also one uh one boy and one man the young man who participated to our activities so in this way i think that we found a space where to share with them our our ideas because i think that it's very important to respect the fact that they are not first generation like like me like us the founders of the the the organization they have their own organizations we collaborate with them for example by uh giving them some expertise to teaching sharing with them how we make fundraising and sharing with them our experience and so on so we are connected in this way with them with exchanges but not uh trying to offer to them some uh some some projects because we are really complimentary but we are not overlapped this is uh important to to to take in mind perfect thank you so much uh jessica victoria i just wanted to say that yes it is of utmost importance to have sustainability in terms of the diaspora engagement to be sure that we include the younger people and why not include this as part of culture in their syllabus so that they already know before they even get to the first generation to understand that there are different cultures and uh they need to understand how to engage because at times i've realized that it is is when you catch them young in my opinion but uh i could be speaking maybe from a position of maybe the culture here in southern africa and maybe my country simba but i i find that at times it is good when you give them exposure so that they already understand about the importance of tolerating each other the importance of sharing with one another i think it requires uh creativity in terms of how we can engage them because uh as generations we need to sustain different generations there are different ways of communicating through them we're talking earlier on of the channels of communication we can reach them either through facebook however way the different groups normally do engage with each other and also just through schools that they teach us even at university i know some universities they have compulsory um compulsory modules why not include that as one of the compulsory modules because of globalization we already have uh people either you end up working as a diaspora or you have to reach two donors who are from a different culture all together why can't we have a wealth in missing a lot of different ideas which can be sustainable and which speaks through to different generations it's just a thought thank you thank you jessica uh let's go with victoria yeah i was waiting for this moment of course like they did they did has mentioned yes so that we are like representing m icp and of course like for us for our migration platform young people are incredibly important and and of course like uh it means that like every generation doesn't matter yet like the first or the second or the third and basically all the programs all the work that we are doing is we are channeling in order to engage as many young people as possible and um so speaking from the communications point of view i was already saying that one of our strategies is that we are always trying to go to those channels where those young people potentially leave that they use so we can tell them from our content creates creation we can channel them our emissions our values and engage them a bit into our platform so they can understand that they are not a lot that our platform exists and we have a lot of amazing programs that can involve them into our actions and besides that of course like we are doing a lot of things like uh like consulting young people and uh only for example in 2022 yeah like um we consulted uh i think around 120 youth led organizations and networks and 284 individuals um so that's why like concluding as i said like we are like doing a lot of different programs and uh all the time our target audience is always like young people thank you very much victoria uh we have a question here uh i would like to ask for young members of diaspora or experts on how to maximize the use of tiktok for diaspora engagement the chart that was shared by victoria started that tiktok is mainly used for humor or entertainment but how can we go a step further and go to action are there specific examples or best practices thank you very much maybe someone also here has some experience on tiktok and victoria obviously go ahead tell us your experience please i'm so happy actually as i was saying like of course like i mean um i love what we are doing definitely like and of course i'm very happy to share with you the campaign that we are doing this year on tiktok that is cold i will say again everybody knows something that you don't know we have a channel let's talk migration there so of course like i find it very inspiring of course like when you speak about best practices uh young migration also has incredible experience and for us it's always like a role model for what can be done on migration issues on tiktok and they have incredible work that i admire a lot like as a communication specialist uh speaking about tiktok as an entertainment platform indeed there is like this kind of stigma regarding a lot of different platforms like instagram is just for photos yeah like i'm speaking about restaurants like the way or somebody went out and tiktok was just for entertainment in reality i think that in 2023 we should stop like stigmatizing so much different communication channels on social media because they have become so powerful in order to target sort assorted audiences because uh when we use this kind of channels of course uh we are not just saying what exactly we are doing we are explaining our to our target audience why we are doing this why we are doing this kind of programs and this is a very effective strategy in order to make them follow us and to be engaged into the programs that we are doing uh that's why uh when we look at the tiktok as an engagement thing you should say you should take it as a very positive thing because to explain why is easier when it's engaging because in this case your target audience don't take it as a very uh hard content yeah and we are absolutely informationally overload now incredibly especially like on the european and american continent that's why it's even better and it's going to be even more effective so use this tool and take it as a strong thing um so speaking about best like examples as i said of course like i advise you to look at what we are doing and what is uh your migration is doing thank you thank you very much victoria if and there's anyone else who would like to participate before we move to the next question i think we move to the next question then uh there is definitely a need to acknowledge the inter-generational that was the hard word inter-generational that's your of diaspora engagement for development how does the more experienced generation can learn from the younger generation and vice versa is there the will for mutually beneficial learning to take place with diasporas interesting question which of the speakers would like to participate here is there like a will for mutually beneficial learning to take place with the diaspora is there something we can like you know do to maybe reduce also the gap between the experienced generation and the younger generation and vice versa what do we think here okay go ahead please we stand thank you thank you for this question it's um um i think that for all the efforts for development of our countries are useful and should be uh put together uh young generations and more experienced ones or the opposite maybe the the let's say that the first generation or we as the the oldest generation uh we we surely can can learn from the vision of the word and of the development that the young generations want to have we are those who are more who are coming from a history of of development let's say that is classical without entering in the theory of of development we are those who who think about the economic growth and about the literacy the the classical themes of development the young generation has new objectives it thinks more about the sustainability of the actions they have they are really in in in trying to to build a new world not only in for example Indonesia or in Africa but or in South America or in the global south but also in the north so they have a new idea of the world and i think that we can learn from them uh surely by by actively listening to what they want to to see in in in these countries and to um and to share with them why we are acting as i i i wrote about what said victoria yes trying to think yes why we are doing what we are doing and writing it giving sense to our actions and sharing this sense with the new generations the second generations as they are also bridging between other words they are born in another country they are they went to a school in another country and surely they are a source of another vision of themselves of migration and of our also countries of origin so this originality should be empowered and and reached and and maybe we will try to to make them express this vision of themselves through tiktok and and and they many things emerge they are incredible they create everything the young generation so we can listen to them also there thank you thank you very much we have jackaline who has wait before we go to the next question with jackaline any other speakers would like to answer address this question actually i wanted to share like oh jessica if you want no let's go between let me go with jessica it's so conventual not using like these cans i wanted to say that exactly like just to add uh uh to to to the previous speaker saying that um we actually like once we're indeed like thinking how we can uh voice uh what young people and why young migrants for example are thinking about what their problems are and in our everybody knows what you don't know campaign we were like doing street interviews with young migrants where we were exactly asking these kind of problems and in this case we were targeting not just young people but in general like different generations in order to voice the problems of young migrants so this kind of content and video were exactly for targeting different generations but in a very um uh let's say young friendly uh content way perfect thank you so much victoria jessica yes i just want to also add one just to say that uh it also might be necessary that uh the young generation is also engaged at a national level i see like for example in africa we have the african union and with groups of youth and when they are meeting they also meet when there's a summit they have a long side that also the youth meetings going on and there are ways also that they are they attend meetings which are engaged or which are held for national leaders at the au and i think at a national level we could do the same thing because when we keep them engaged at a national level it will be easier also to have them either reached now or in the national level because certainly there's a lot that they other generation can learn from the younger generation and vice versa but i think there's these tendons that as adults we tend to think that we know it all which in some cases it's not always the case there are certain things that we i think as adults we should be willing to learn from the younger generation to have that teachable skill that can open up to younger people as well but i think it takes at a national level as well to talk about it to engage all generations together at the same time to have platforms that we can also share together at the same time even though the different generations can meet in different platforms but to have at least one big platform even once a year that we can all engage each other and be able to be willing to teach each other and share the ideas and knowledge together thank you thank you so much Jessica we have one little comment from patty here i think social media platforms have also been used for highlighting diaspora cultural capita to share and showcase their talents from chef to dance in the case of african experiences we have seen afro beach tutors and afro fusion kitchen chef make likelihood as they expand the world knowledge of these cultures very good very interesting how they're using the new social media to expand let's go with jackaline roberts who had a question i guess her hand is up i actually wanted to just add so i'm from same sv2g in the uk same vincent and the grenadine second generation and we work as a diaspora organization with ages from seven years up to 80 years so we do a lot of intergenerational work so we do this through the creative cultural connections of race and awareness of our african caribbean intangible cultural heritage and encourage the diversity of our cultural expressions and we facilitate programs that align to un sustainable goals which that way it connects and transforms the lives of young people families and adults so we do this within the creative arts and heritage sector and we deliver health and well-being racial justice and equality with projects and programs with a whole system approach and we do that within our communities with stakeholders both to understand the problems that we are looking at sulfing and to support the identification of testing solutions for this i think listening to what has been said so far in terms of engaging with young people i think it's about co-creation so it's not always about going out doing surface i think what we work within a creative sector so we run new successions as well we deliver heritage projects where we have young people researching their history and at the same time we are working together collectively so that that intergenerational gap is actually closed just what to say to add to your conversation thank you so much for sharing thank you so much is there anyone else who would like to maybe make another comment you know compliment like what we're talking about right now or any questions something that maybe wasn't clear before during the the presentation this is your moment to speak or to write us yet you did great comment from Jacqueline it was very very insightful we have a few more minutes before we have to do the closing remarks so maybe the speakers also want to add something else to do that the closing from our side before the closing remarks per se this is also a great time to to let me know sure so i would also by the way once before please don't like start running away from the the sum once we finish this because by the end you're gonna receive a little survey that is going to be here on the sum itself you know just to know what things we can improve whether you like the most about that conversation we're holding uh with i at diaspora so please just don't leave soon right away um but but i's asking us if we can share organization websites or media so we learn from your work so there's a link and i think Veronica is going to share it again with you guys that you can there is like a document or speakers have been adding a lot of information a lot of links and very useful uh contacts and information that we can use later on and peter has raised his hand so let's see peter please go ahead hello there hi can you see me actually yes we can see wonderful thank you so much for the wonderful session and we're from gdc so i have been privileged to hear all the good comments and suggestions and strategies from across the world so really want to come in because i noticed there is a question or a comment from paru paru so i want to make sure that paru can hear from us and and also we are here so a bit of uh introduction to gdc later on you will hear from louisa who will be keeping a closing remark um but um myself from gdc also and we work directly with diaspora organizations not just from a specific country but across the world so it's wonderful to see a lot of colleagues here potentially we will be reaching out to connect and so watch the space most importantly is um paru i uh we we not sure if we're connected but most importantly is um when when there is a concern when there is an issue and although we we don't work directly with diaspora individuals we work with diaspora organizations so if there are a group of diaspora organizations need to reach out and feel free to reach out to us and then what we have done this year um i think it was two three weeks ago we had the turkish syria earthquake response so we organized the global diaspora humanitarian forum and which was a very heartfelt moment because um we all came to build the global solidarity so it was strictly humanitarian non-political and um but we also realized and we also noticed since last year's ukraine response we organized the forum we know lots of diaspora organizations um in other countries are also needing help so we are going to also listen to every single diaspora organization most important thing and most helpful thing if possible for you you feel that there is a need and there is the importance to reach out please do um gather the dos diaspora organizations to reach out to us i've included the contact message a contact um email address or or their website so feel free to reach out to us this is not just um to be honest this meeting is about impactful skills although it is not does not mean that it is only for social media we bound to have different challenges come across in in life so my my takeaway is i mean things do not always go positively and when things do not go that way um it is also very important for us to come together and and build that solidarity and find solutions together and this is the perfect example today um to see this happening so thank you so much again everyone and i'll stop now no too much thank you thank you so much peter thank you i see that some people are leaving very like victoria very it is also very that just put a very very resource link very important there you just click on it and you should be able to open it it's a one drive document uh but we also have victoria that is sharing some social media jackie lee that has shared also her website so i think it's it's very important we have a hear a comment from patty that i missed uh for jackie lee reminded me that social media has also been used to communicate advocacy messages on key issues around governance and development in the homelands as a diaspora member without paper access um to more balanced news from mainstream media social media is a lifeline for information taken in right doses make some interesting conversations or roping in the younger generation yeah that's very true sometimes there's a lot of like content generation to keep us updated with what's going on in our homeland so that's the other on the other side diaspora makes content but also our homeland makes content for us and then we can keep updated with what's going on uh jessica is also here sharing about genesis entrepreneurship trust very good thank you very much uh if one of the speakers would like to give some final words before i start introducing uh louisa suarez who's going to give the closing remarks this is your moment to tell me uh jessica i think your raise your hand i saw finger yes i find the the tech uh hands up i just wanted to say thank you very much uh it's been quite um uh fruitful to share ideas and to make us think on how we can communicate this diasporas because at times we tend to do things without uh what can i say kind of planning them and making them be needed together and understand the importance of networking and sharing so this meeting has been very helpful for me personally and i've learned quite a lot that i'm sure will reflect on to try and see how we can improve our own communication in our own organization and also as a diaspora as we because as we were sharing a thought came to mind that we have the zimbabwe youth council and i work with zimbabwe youth in in in my country and you know i then started wondering okay how can we also reach out to them you know these are different generations from me so these ideas that have been coming to mind is during this meeting on how best we can also implement certain ideas and how we can borrow certain lessons from others you know so yes we've learned quite a bit from this meeting and i thank you very much for organizing this meeting and for all your contributions thank you thank you desica uh okay wait i see yes it was then i go ahead please yeah i would like also to thank all of you i learned a lot we communicated and it functioned so thank you very much thank you thank you victoria yeah i also would love to thank you all and the last drink i wanted to tell you that i have a friend tereza who is a great expert in shaping migration narratives in the world and she's older than me and i really always like as as a young generation always happy to listen to those like who already like have been shaping these narratives for so many years and i said tereza can you please tell me what is your secret so you have been working in this field for so many years what helps you to shape this narrative in such an effective way she said curiosity curiosity for the world because i'm still curious like a child every time and i look at every story like i have never seen it before and this is what helps me to look at this and this is the final thing what i want to advise is never lose your curiosity even though you work with this every day every hour every minute and you feel that it's absolutely clear i know it all like there is nothing i don't know about migration no trying to look at this with your new eyes like understanding that there are new generation there are new people there are new like generations of migrants and the icebergs growing and creating thank you very much for having me here it was a pleasure and an honor thank you so much victoria and again thank you to the three of our guests today and i'm going to now let you know who is going to do our closing remarks is luisa suarez she's a vice chair global diaspora confederation uh luisa was one of the first trustees to participate in gdc's journey from the beginning in 2020 she's a former advisor of the corporate desks robot bank in netherlands and has more than 18 years of experience in the field of development and business her expertise is facilitating and helping starting entrepreneurs write business plans set up projects and advice on financial matters luisa has been active in dutch politics for many years she was the first state member for the province of south holland as the first cape virgin woman ever in dutch history and later as a city councilor in the rotherdam city council luisa has been representing african diaspora in a number of high level activities including the iom civil society group un action committee global forum on migration and development un network on migration and join african europe strategy european civil society group she's a former member sorry a former board member of the national institute of dutch slavery pass and heritage from 2017 to 2022 she's and she's still the ambassador and representative of the foundation biggy bone luisa studied advocacy and philanthropy uh university and previously studied advanced business english and practice operational manager but she has not been able to complete a play psychology due to her work in politics uh prior to roba bank netherlands luisa worked as a policy advocacy manager at africa europe diaspora development platform and as a consultant for international cooperation in the field of healthcare and agriculture currently she works in an international law office in brucelles for the department corporate and finance thank you very much luisa the floor is yours wow thank you that was a lot yeah first of all well my challenge is i think is to see if i'm a good listener because i'm listening for the best two hours and as i'm old school so i have my pen and paper so i would try to do a good closure uh again my name is luisa swarez i'm the vice chair of gdc and just to compliment my colleague pete quok um indeed we we try to do a lot and our motto is we exist to empower the diaspora organization for all people um and and we have to take in consideration that not everything goes as we want um but we can certainly starting to talk to each other and listen so listen is one of my focus point as i used to train diaspora organization as well on talking to government on getting access to projects and and to funding so one of the things that i really want to begin is the general gap indeed we have a general gap um in in and in the interculture community because when we talk about the interculture community we always think about others but even among us we have the interculture community and um there is a lot being said on the effects and mastering uh a vision uh mastering a project listen to others because we are very quick to talk and um and to give an opinion what i used to do i used to tell my students because as a former politician i used to um give lesson as well in the Netherlands on people uh what is politics and how you combine everything and how everything is connected to politics um and how to approach all i will give you an example i had this student and she had a project and she really wanted to do the project but that was her only focus and she couldn't see anything around as i was having a conversation with her so i told her if you go to your neighbor's door and you found so hard that you break the door and you ask her for sugar what do you think it would happen she passed as she said to be well i don't think she will give me the sugar i told her why are you doing the same with the government and that was for her the moment to realize to have another approach an effective approach as um in my field now we talk about the risk we talk about compliance and there is this thing that know your customer so if you are going um if it is a local if it is a national or international or any kind of project that you have any kind of vision that you have and you want to succeed in it the first important thing is know your customer that means that you need to research who are you going to talk to what kind of institution what kind of people what kind of project they already did that is number one key the second all is a good preparation and the the panel today was incredible uh because i was the whole time knocking and talking to myself um and this is a very good practice that we need to know how to do the good preparation so know your customer that's the very first thing think about with who i'm going to talk to what is my vision what is my project and how to sell it um a lot of of conversation today was also about the cv so how do you sell for yourself because the applying for um for a project or applying for funding for a project is just like a job interview you prepare for a job interview you sell yourself and that's exactly the same thing that you need to do in a job interview and one of the key points today was when you're talking about um money that's the very last thing so you just like have from point a from one to ten and money is 12 you have to lobbying by lobbying um that means that uh sometimes you have to have three four five cup of coffee before you start to saying i have this idea and those other things that um that really captured me today as well the digital communication um as jessica mentioned the covid 19 had really a shift in the world on the digital communication on the platform because before we could not even think about and let me say in 2019 we could not even think about having a platform and communicate it all to each other so um so the impact of of covid um on it that we are able to do this today and be more effective the other thing that was uh was mentioned as well that we need to emphasize more is the partnership we really need to have partnership and we really need to step out of the island part as well this is my organization this is how i do things and this is also a step that we need to take towards the younger organization because and this is the thing that we as the first and the second generation can really learn from the younger people because they are more collaborative they are more working together and this is something that we were not taught we were taught you have an idea you go you express to the people that you think are interested in it and you move forward but partnership is the key importance in all this um to achieve what what you want so the idea the project the lobbying the building relationships listening the generation gap all this have to be uh being in consideration when you are mastering when you have a vision for the project because this is the only way that we can move forward so uh that's for my part as i try to listen as well so uh yeah thank you very much ladies um thank you and thank you iom and thank you i diaspora on behalf of gd's thank you so much lisa for your words i just want to remind everyone that we're gonna put a little survey here on the zoom please do not leave it it might have show up on your screen right now let's do it together in the meantime there's people in the comments leaving their emails or websites or social media which is great that's a great way to communicate to use the right channels of communication here uh so feel free to like start uh spamming on the chat and let's answer together the survey so we can you know get this option to see what can we improve what you like the most about this uh you know like to make much more uh events like this in the future you know what can we do what can we how can i diaspora and iom help you uh to strengthen your organization so thank you again everyone thank you victoria thank you we're done thank you jessica so much for all your insight i've learned a lot personally i'm really like learned a lot and i hope to connect with new girls women in some other points you know across any other event i'm also here for anything you might need uh vernica here in the chat is inviting you everyone to connect in i diaspora you can create an account and you can also even if you have your own events you can put it in the platform as well so you can reach out to more people so i advise everyone to just after you finish with the survey go to the i diaspora website and register please uh so we can you know have more events like this get to know each other better you know build uh bridges between different diasporas around the world that we have so thank you much thank you so much everyone it was a pleasure to be here with all of you thank you ana thank you thank you so much thank you thank you thank you very much thank you thank you so much everyone and happy birthday happy birthday let's always happy birthday to toria that it was today here on her birthday with us that's very true and good morning good afternoon good evening to whatever you guys are connecting from uh you know go go ahead and make your diasporas even