 Thank you so much. Welcome everyone. My name is David Kirkpatrick. I am very eager to welcome you to the Connect to Include, Include to Connect session, which as you probably know, is the second stop on the Road to Addis series of events which will lead up to the World Telecommunication Development Conference, WTDC 2021 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This coming November. This session is very much about the people of the world and how they will participate and need to participate and can participate in the globally connected society. And it really is a way of really helping us better understand the human side of the ITU, which we often think of as very much about speeds and speeds and different kinds of phones and networks. But here we're talking about people and how they can be included. So as I said, my name is David Kirkpatrick. I'm a journalist based in New York. I run a company called Techonomy, which puts on conferences. And I'm very proud to be working very closely with the ITU, which I'm a very strong supporter of on this series of events. So I'd like to tell you a few things about the technical details of today's session because it will take just a little bit of understanding. It's entirely remote as we all know we're living remote. It's webcasted, live streamed and recorded. As a participant, you are free to use the chat during the session at any time for any comments you have. Questions that are addressed to speakers should be inserted in the Q&A function. And if time allows, we will address some of these questions. You can upvote a question by clicking the thumbs up icon next to a question and Zoom will automatically sort them by the number of upvotes. During the session, we also will prove writing captioning services so that you can activate by clicking on closed caption in the bottom bar of the Zoom interface. So you should see closed caption as an option there and you can read that if you'd like to. We also will be providing interpretation in Arabic, English, French, Russian, Chinese and Spanish. And as you can see, international sign language. The sign language interpreters will be on screen throughout the session. To listen to the available interpretation channels, please click on interpretation at the bottom right of on the Zoom interface bar at the bottom and select the language you'd like to hear. If you want to hear the original audio, you can select off in the interpretation menu. Off simply means floor as if you were sitting in the room with the speakers. Participants in a language channel will hear the translated audio and also the original audio at a lower volume. To hear only the interpreted language, click mute original audio. So there are the housekeeping points. Now, I'm very eager to introduce our incredible group of speakers today, especially our featured keynote speaker, Her Excellency Ms. Saleh Wurzudeh, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. We're very pleased to have her joining us. In addition, our speakers will be Atman Al Moavar, the Research Lead at the MISC Foundation, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, the Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, Monica Duhem, CEO of Hear Colors, Professor Anthony Giannumis, who's Associate Professor of Universal Design of Information and Communication Technology at Oslo Metropolitan University, Lisette Gonzales Romero, from the Telecommunications Indigenous Communities of Mexico, Claudia Gordon, Director of Government and Compliance with T-Mobile Accessibility, Michael Hoden, who is CEO of the Global Coalition on Aging, Fumzile Mlambo Nkuka, the United Nations Undersecretary General and Executive Director of UN Women. Very pleased to have her with us. Joanne O'Rearden, Activist and Sports Journalist, Emile Say Portillo, from Conitel in Paraguay, Emma Randall, who's a Youth Engagement Representative at the ITU, Hans Vesper, Chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications, Roland White, Director for Global Diversity and Inclusion at Microsoft, Judith Williams, who's Head of People Sustainability and a Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at SAP. And finally, Jim Rogers, our Graphic Designer and Illustrator for the Road to Addis Events. Jim will be composing a graphic illustration of the discussion today, and we will rejoin him at the end and he will show us the image that he has done throughout this session, which will illustrate as much as possible of all the wonderful things you're about to hear. So now let me pass the floor to my co-moderator, Sango. Thank you, David. Hi, everyone. I'm Sango, and I'm the Child Online Protection mascot. I keep children safe online. Now, I would like you to meet Danola, our Youth Community Leader. Hi, Danola. What are you up to? Hello, Sango. Hello, everyone. I'm Danola and I work with the Generation of Connects community, which is basically the ITU's work with young people. So if you have any questions, or any comments during the session, please use hashtag Road to Addis and hashtag ITWTDC on your tweets. And also, you can feel free to add the Generation of Connects hashtag. Thank you over to you, David and Sango. Thank you, Sango and Danola. And now it's my pleasure to give the floor to Doreen Bogdan-Martin for her opening remarks. Take it away, Doreen. Thank you, David. So good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone, and welcome to Connect to Include, Include to Connect. Our next stop on the Road to Addis, and really happy that our discussion today is part of the Commission on the Status of Women. It's also part of the WISIS Forum 2021. Today's theme is digital inclusion, and I think it could hardly be more timely. Our post-COVID world, in our post-COVID world, digital exclusion increasingly means economic exclusion. It means social exclusion. It means educational exclusion and exclusion from a whole raft of new opportunities that those of us that are already connected take for granted. Digital exclusion particularly affects rural and remote dwellers and also impacts certain demographics more than others. In our session today, we're going to look at strategies to drive the digital inclusion, not only of women and girls and young people, but also of other marginalized groups like the elderly, persons with disabilities, children, Indigenous groups, and people living in remote areas. So what concrete actions are needed to ensure inclusive equal access and use of ICTs for all? Which countries, private sector companies, and international organizations are leading the way? What types of partnerships and global cooperation efforts are proving most effective? We have an exceptional panel of experts, as you've just heard from David, and I'm really looking forward to hearing your views. We also have this great representation of youth groups following the discussion, and today we're launching our Generation Connect Visionaries Board, which is our new youth consultation committee. This new board comprises eight competitively recruited youth experts and eight high level appointees that are going to help us to provide strategic guidance to ITU and to ensure that we champion the voice of youth to advance digital development. Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, WTDC will be hosted in Addis Ababa, as David just mentioned, and it is therefore my great pleasure and my honor to invite the Honorable President of Ethiopia, Her Excellency, Madam Sahele Workswede, to address us today. Madam President, I give you the floor. Over to you. Thank you so very much. It's a pleasure to see many friends in this call, and I would like to greet you all, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great pleasure that I welcome you all as we open the road to Addis series of events to shape the 2021 digital development agenda. Digital technology is one of the core enablers in the path towards a brighter, more resilient, and inclusive future. In these exceptional times that we live in, digital technology can radically transform lives and help the world rapidly recover for what has been lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the road to technological advancement is made challenging, especially in developing countries such as ours, because of many factors. Chief among the challenges is the ever-growing inequalities within our communities. This disparity manifests itself in terms of access to affordable and high-quality technology as well as the know-how and education in utilizing digital technologies. Because of this, we find ourselves unable to improve the quality of life of our people and using digital technology to ensure social, political, and economic development. Therefore, the concept of digital inclusion is of paramount importance to Ethiopia. Digital inclusion, as you know, has two basic underlying concepts. Access to affordable and high-quality technology and the digital literacy competency that is needed to utilize the technology efficiently. As a concept, inclusion or inclusivity is a mindset and a perspective that needs to be a length through which we see our every activity, especially digital transformation activities. As such, projects, programs, regulations, systems, and more specifically digital skills and competency development programs should all be seen through the length of inclusivity and ensure that no one is left behind. However, it remains a sad reality that half of the planet remains unconnected and doesn't benefit from the facilities and services provided by digital technology. The gender gap in global internet usage is a stark example of how digital divides reflect and amplify existing social, cultural, or men use the internet than women. Therefore, inclusion is in itself a goal in addition to being a powerful enabler. Leaving no one behind in the digital world means ensuring that technology is people-centered. This encompasses that no one is offline due to the lack of connectivity or due to the lack of accessibility of the digital transformation, products, and services. This session of the Road to Addis series that we are launching today aims to address the specific needs of digital inclusion of women and girls, youth and elderly, persons with disabilities, children, and people living in remote areas to achieve true and meaningful universal connectivity. As a milestone, the Connect2 Include session will provide all the necessary answers to ensure that no one is left out in this movement for bridging the digital divide and gender gap with the transformative powers of information technology. Ethiopia's first ever digital strategy, Digital Ethiopia 2025, has inclusive prosperity as one of its main objectives. The strategy mainstreams inclusivity in every activities and projects of the strategy. Ethiopia is committed to digital inclusion in many ways among which is ensuring the connectivity is a reality for every citizen within its borders. To achieve this, Ethiopia is embarking upon a series of bold reforms to accelerate development in the technology sector. Let me share two primary reforms briefly that the government is currently working on. These reforms are at various stages of development and the National Telecommunications Regulator, Ethiopian Communications Authority has been set up to oversee and drive them. One of the reform is for the sector liberalization. The government has announced its intention to liberalize the telecom sector and the process is underway. The second is reform for infrastructure and service separation for ethiotelicon. Separation of infrastructure and service wings of ethiotelicon is being considered to leverage cost and management efficiencies. By taking such bold innovative steps, Ethiopia will address critical gaps through high-level political involvement to develop comprehensive roadmap and regulations for the telecom sector including for telecom sector liberalization. I spoke earlier. In conclusion, observing the range of participants this event brings together, I believe that various perspectives and voices are represented and the collective wisdom required to untangle the complex digital inclusion problems is present. I'm certain that this event and the series of events that it is preceding will not only produce solutions but also draw out practical avenues for their timely and effective implementation of our digital inclusion agenda. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the organizers from all corners of the globe and look forward to welcoming you all to Ethiopia, the first African nation to host the telecommunication development conference event in November 2021. See you then and I thank you for your attention. Thank you so much, Your Excellency. It's an honor to have you with us today. So we're going to do a little poll quickly now just to break the ice and test your knowledge about some of the topics we'll be discussing. So the first question of the total world population, how many currently live with some form of disability? 200 million, 500 million, 750 million, or over 1 billion? The second question, how many young people below 25 do not have fixed broadband internet access at home? 500 million, 1.3 billion, 2.2 billion, or 3 billion, which I think may not yet be on your screen. I'll give you a second to answer those. Well, I'll go ahead and read the third question of the 3.7 billion people currently unconnected. How many do you think are women? 1.3 billion, 1.8 billion, 2 billion, or 2.5 billion? So we're going to give you just a second to answer the questions and then I'll tell you what the right answer is. We'll see what you thought. So go ahead and select an answer for each of those three questions. Shall we see the results? OK. Well, you're a pretty well-informed group. The majority of you said 1 billion for the first question and that was the correct answer. 1 billion people in the world currently live with some form of disability. For the second question, you also, the majority of you also got it right. 2.2 billion people below 25 do not have fixed broadband internet access at home. And on the final question about women of the unconnected people in the world, you were, I guess, a little bit more pessimistic than necessary. It's still a terrible figure of 2 billion, but it's not 2.5 billion. So there's a little bit of good news. And to give us a little more data, we're going to go to the data room with Doreen, who's going to tell us a little more about the facts and figures of digital inclusion. Thank you. Thank you, David. Of course, data is vital to effective decision-making, especially when we're trying to address the needs of specific target groups. So data is an urban, rural divide in access and use of ICTs, part of its infrastructure. Globally, 95% of people living in urban areas have access to 4G networks, but only 71% in rural areas. But the divide is not only about infrastructure. Globally, 72% of households in urban areas have access to the internet at home, compared with only 37% in rural areas. In LDCs, these figures stand at 25% and 10% respectively. But in addition to the urban, rural divide, there's also an access versus a usage divide. This tells us that there are more factors at play, and the president herself mentioned some of them, factors like affordability, digital skills, content, and level of education. So let's look now at that usage. We know that young people are enthusiastic embracers of the internet, and our numbers confirm that. Globally, around 51% of people are using the internet, but among the 15 to 24-year-olds in places where connectivity is available and affordable, this figure is almost 70%. This is encouraging, especially in view of the fact that we have this fast-growing youth demographic in much of the developing world, where, of course, digital technologies have tremendous potential to become a major accelerator of economic growth and, of course, an important driver towards the SDGs. Another well-known divide is the gender divide. Of course, this is a critical topic as we meet here during the Commission on the Status of Women. Globally, 48% of all women were using the internet in 2019 compared to 55% of all men. And in developed countries, the gap has almost disappeared, but in developing countries, there's still a substantial gap, and it gets bigger in LDCs. But last but not least, I come to another divide that we all saw growing at an accelerated pace during the pandemic. It's the learning divide, and personally, I find this one very troubling. At the peak of the pandemic, more than 190 countries closed the doors of their schools to 94% of the learners worldwide, creating the largest mass disruption of education in history. Many governments did an overnight shift to online learning, but the reality is that globally, two in three children and young people don't have fixed broadband access at home to continue their education. As I mentioned before, data is critical, and lack of data continues to represent a major hurdle for public policy developments. Data tells us where we were, where we are, and where we ought to be. We need more and better data and targets for digital connectivity and affordability, but also metrics to measure the digital inclusion of all groups. We also need to link data to people. As the president said, we need to be people-centered and to real stories like the ones we're going to hear from our amazing panelists today. And without further ado, David, back over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Doreen. Let's now turn to our panelists to start sharing their experiences. We're going to start with Emile Ceportillo, who is joining us from Paraguay, and will be speaking in Spanish. Let me remind you that interpretation is available, so you must switch to the English Channel if you wish to continue listening to the session in English, and you'll see there's an interpretation, control in the lower right of the bottom bar of your Zoom interface. So, Emile Ceportillo, what would your life look like without access to ICTs? Good morning and good afternoon to all of you. And to proceed with the answer, I consider that my life in ICT would be limited. And I say this because when I imagine that scenario, I see myself deprived of access as quickly as possible to the information, as well as to the multiple sources of knowledge. I don't think I would have motivation for research, innovation, creativity. I wouldn't be able to communicate easily with people from my environment, as well as with people from outside. And as for access to education, my possibilities of acquiring and developing new technical skills would be reduced. And if, on the other hand, to this imaginary scenario, I consider a condition, or I incorporate a condition of belonging to an indigenous community, or simply live in the interior of my country, this would become a barrier. And why do I say this? Because my country has two official languages. One is Spanish and the other is Guarani. And I refer to this because approximately 87% of the Paraguay people speak Guarani. Guarani is communicated. And of course, this accentuates more in the interior of the country. And in this context, I would like to highlight the right to access the opportunities that would help me improve my quality of life. With this, I want to highlight the following. That although I am imagining this scenario, there are other people, both in my country and in other countries that perhaps this scenario is a reality. And finally, and definitely, I think Sintiq would not have had the opportunity to acquire new skills and would not have been able to participate in the program America's Girls Ken Code, in which I had the opportunity to learn, to create and program an app for the operating system Android, which resulted to be an extraordinary and quite enriching experience. And it would also not have been possible to share with you today. Thank you very much for your comment. Thank you, Emile Say. Let me ask the same question to Emma Randall, who is the ITU youth representative. So Emma, for you, what would life look like without access to ICTs? Hello, everyone, and thank you for having me today. My name is Emma Jane Randall, and I'm a 23-year-old master's student from Canada with a degree in mechanical engineering. My life without ICTs is customizable from how it is currently for many reasons, but today I want to talk just about three. Socializing, education, and work opportunities. Firstly, like many young people, my social life is heavily reliant on ICTs, especially right now as a result of the global pandemic. Whether this be texting a friend to meet up for a walk or organizing a virtual board game event of my family around the world, ICTs help me to stay connected to social media. Many young people, including myself, would lose our platforms to re-communicate both on a personal level as well as with larger communities. Thinking about the value ICTs have to help us engage with larger communities leads me to education. ICTs provide us with access to a boundless amount of growing knowledge and global insight. As an engineer and a student, I use ICTs every day. In fact, ICTs have been working almost completely remotely. This past year has shown that although we all know ICTs are not always a perfect substitute for in-person, they can enable remote education, which is crucial right now to keeping students engaged. Not having ICTs would impact everyone, but especially young people with developing interests, skills, and values. Building on this, ICTs facilitate innovative employment opportunities. Without ICTs, I would not be able to participate in my current job as most of my colleagues are based in Geneva and I'm based in Canada. I really enjoy working with the ITU as part of the Generation Connect team. Every day, I'm seeing how ICTs can empower youth to help solve the problems of the world and work towards achieving the sustainable development goals. Young people right now are growing up in a digital world, and it is essential that we have meaningful, impact on the development of this world. The work that ITU is doing is vital to making this a reality and I am so excited to be part of it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Emma. Now I'd like to ask Joanne O'Reardon, the same question. Joanne is somebody who knows a lot about overcoming barriers. So Joanne, what would your life be like without access to ICTs? Yeah, thanks, David, and thanks for everyone for inviting me here. So I was born with a rare condition known as total amelia, meaning I was born without all of my limbs. So I would just go like a normal child. My parents made sure everything was drawn to plan and at around the age of eight I learned that I had to go onto a computer in order to complete my work. So I had to learn how to type and I do that simply with a big spiral here. And I put it into my mouth and I bang away on the keyboard. So at the minute I can type 42 words a minute. I had to learn how to basically code, which wasn't cool for an eight-year-old in 2004. A woman by the name of Christine O'Mahaney, she did not know me at all. She developed an entire software that we now take for granted. So she was one of the first people in the island of Ireland to put together hyperlinks. And she was the first person to install basically Microsoft Word for every school so that every student could upload their work in that format. So that didn't exist in 2004. So now in schools when I see my cousins come home with iPads and they're doing their work and I see all the cool stuff they're doing apparently is incredibly jealous. But I suppose for me technology has opened up endless opportunities. I can connect to the likes of you all around the world. Now with obviously COVID-19 I can continue to drive home the mission of access, access into employment, access into education, access into healthcare. And as Doreen mentioned earlier I'm actually one of the I think with 75% of rural people in the world who don't have direct access to broadband. So for the first time in my nine years since I last appeared at the United Nations I had no voice. I was caught off. I couldn't drive home my mission of access. So I had to move basically into the town center to get new Wi-Fi. And I suppose my mission and suppose my ask for everyone here today is to understand that I think as we move into the future broadband is going to be as vital to the social and economic advancement like motorways were or dams or electricity were in similar eras. And I think similar to the 20th century we need to make sure that national planning and public and private sector investments are involved. In Ireland I saw a school in Dublin invest an entire 2.2 million into an online resource program for teaching. Now 2.2 million is not something we have in the bank every day and turns out that was a fee paying school. So I would encourage everyone here to make sure it's accessible. I would encourage everyone to make sure that the investment is done correctly. And I would encourage those that who are putting in the investment into digital infrastructure to make sure that there are no unfair disparities to create a human interaction so that when people are given the tech that they have someone they can go back to and say listen I don't know how to copy and paste or anything like that. So I think that's for me the most important thing. Wow Joanne eloquent you're a great exponent of these issues. Thank you for that. Next I would like to ask we're going to go to a couple of speakers who will get a chance to comment on anything they've heard and I'll also ask each of them a specific question and I'm going to start with someone we're especially honored to have with us the UN Undersecretary General and Executive Director of UN Women from Zile, so from Zile what's the social and economic impact of having more women online and also feel free to comment on anything you've heard from our other speakers. Thank you very much David greetings to everyone. Thank you so much to these brilliant speakers who have just spoken. I feel like I have nothing to say because everybody has made such important points. Thank you so much for giving us so much evidence on the importance of the subject we are discussing today. For women and girls to be online is a critical and it can enable for social and economic transformation and development because they can access information if they are connected and they can access education and they can access services. As Doreen pointed out access to education is really one area that is troubling all of us. We feel that it is important that we do everything not to have a lost generation after we worked so hard in the last two decades especially to bring girls to school and to make sure that they complete their secondary education. Of course there is access to services such as grants from government, health services and we also know that in particular young adult women use the internet a lot for their small businesses, their promotion and different ways of some income. Online mobile money also is very important. It is important especially for low income users as well as young people and entrepreneurs and women's financial autonomy. When women are financially autonomous they also can escape gender based violence. So this is a lifeline to really staying alive in some cases. Right now 1.7 billion people more than half of former women remain financially excluded from the digital economy. This can mean essential cash transfer program do not reach the women. Think of women who depend on cash that is sent to them by members of their family who are working abroad who live on remittances. And also think of those refugees also who also depend on some transfers that are coming from people who give them support. So this whole area of banking is potentially one big area for all of us. Young women has just joined this program. We have a lot of experience in order to help change financial inclusion. Technology is also life-saving. Numerous stories about how women were able to use a cell phone when they were at risk of being killed experiencing violence against women in order to someone for help. And of course we also want to connect about the dangers as well as staying connected about paying attention to fake news and false information because especially in health, health disinformation is not without victims. So we need to be really vigilant to make sure that we intervene where we see health disinformation. 433 million women are unconnected in middle and low income countries. 165 million fewer women are on mobile phone compared with men. Again that is a gap for us to attend to. And of course the global internet gap is at 17%. The COVID-19 is the first major pandemic on the social media age. I just want us who are here on this platform right now if we were not connected in this pandemic, where would we have been? And I think that just answers the question of how important the moment is. So you can imagine those people who are not connected because those people exist. We have lived through this pandemic without the benefit of connectivity. So we all have to roll up our sleeves. In generation equality we are hoping that many of you will be with us where we are intending to work to fast-track the closing of the gender gap, digital gender gap in all its dimension. Generation equality is also critical for making sure that we continuously encourage governments and give them evidence that will show them where the gaps exist and where we need to make haste. We are glad that ITU is part of generation equality together with UNICEF from the UN family and many other private sector and civil society partners. Hopefully we will be seeing you again in the different activities both on the road and in Addis as well as in generation equality. Thank you. Thank you so much from Zile. And I think the presence of the five very impressive women on the screen right now is something it's good that I'm the only guy here aside from our highly energetic interpreter. Next I'd like to ask Judith Williams who is a major business leader at SAP what is the contribution that diversity makes to SAP as an organization? So welcome and also feel free to comment on anything you've heard Judith. Thank you so much. Thank you very much David and thank you for having me. Diversity is for us a driver of innovation and we have set a target to be the most inclusive software company on the planet and our mission at SAP is to make the world run better and improve people's lives and we're only able to do that if we have a diverse and inclusive workforce where we empower people to run at their best. And so what that means is we have over 150 nationalities represented and we have over 400,000 customers globally and if we are going to do service to our customers we have to make sure that our workforce is going to reflect those customers and we think about that not only in terms of the demographics and making sure that we have a proactive sourcing strategy for women for people of color for different geographies but also in how we think about the accessibility of our products we have a roadmap to make sure that every one of our products is fully accessible to those who might have disabilities. We also extend that to our workplace accessibility because we know we're going to have colleagues who have different challenges and may need accommodations to be successful at SAP. So my team is tasked with making sure that we have a standard for workplace accessibility. We also have some special programs to bring different types of talent into SAP. One program we're particularly proud of is our autism at work program and this is a program that we've had in place since 2014 and we look at it as a program which removes the barriers for success for people with autism to join us at SAP. So we've thought about our hiring process we've thought about our onboarding process and also how we support our employees with autism so that they can be successful and we think about this as not a program that we are giving value to the community of people with autism but an under-leveraged talent source that brings great value to us at SAP and in fact in 2019 or every year we give our Hasso Platner Founders Award for Innovation and the winner in 2020 was actually a young man who came in to our autism at work program. Imagine the innovation we would have missed out on had we not had this view that people need to that we need to look at everyone the talent is evenly distributed among populations even if opportunity is not and it's not and I would say another area where we've really focused at SAP is on promoting the careers of women and also providing digital education to young girls so that our strategy is all about extending digital education globally primarily to young girls but also to underserved communities and then we think a lot about recruiting early talent onto more senior talent making sure that we have a target to have gender equity we have a target to reach gender parity at SAP by 2030 and that's all of our workforce we also have some intermediate goals we want to get to 30% women by the end of 2022 so we set ambitious targets we build an inclusive workplace and we make sure that we communicate that diversity is our reality inclusion is a choice and we ask all of our employees to make this choice every day and that's really what differentiates us and makes us an innovative company. Wow Judith thank you so much that was impressive stuff and SAP has been a leader in many of these areas for a long time great to hear from you now another business leader from a major tech company Claudia Gordon of T-Mobile Accessibility Claudia how does T-Mobile accessibility help people with disabilities gain access to ICTs and technology? Great let me just say first good morning everyone it's bright and early my time in the US I'm in Washington DC and it's nice early in the morning before I answer the question that you asked I want to touch very briefly on the prior discussion when people were talking about life without ICT as a deaf person that is so striking to me I can't imagine life without these tools and also I grew up on the island of Jamaica so thinking about that Jamaica is still considered a developing country I go back every year and I can see that disparity or gap there when I compare life there to my life in America it's so different so I think we need to recognize it's very important access to ICT is more than just a privilege I think it should be considered a right especially for those with disabilities ICTs empower us as everyone else on the panel has said ICTs give us a sense of independence we are independent because of these we're able to access information we're able to make informed decisions because of ICTs without access to ICT I probably would not be able to achieve my educational aspirations I wouldn't have been able to become an attorney I also gain access to gainful employment and there are so many people around the world today who are in the same position as me and really need ICTs for these critical skills we need to think not only about high tech but also low tech for example my home country of Jamaica there's still no captioning on television programs there so imagine during the pandemic life saving health information has been shared nightly on the news breaking news press briefings but there's no access for those who are deaf part of hearing or deafblind because that information isn't captioned so during this entire pandemic that's been an issue when we consider ICTs we consider them broadly and think about all types of disabilities and then finally we must innovate not for people with disabilities but with people with disabilities people with disabilities know what solutions work for them and we need to be included I've seen some innovations for example there are some gloves that are supposed to be able to read sign language and deaf people who use sign language have kind of looked at that and thought okay who developed this you know it's just obviously it wasn't inclusive and you want to be respectful but at the same time we go okay I don't think that will work yet how much time and resources were put into that I've lost the audio can others hear the audio please innovate with people with disabilities as opposed to just in one moment the audio went out is it back on now testing it's on now I think we missed about 15 or 20 seconds and this is Claudia speaking okay I apologize for that I'll answer your question now T-Mobile is very I'm so proud to work for T-Mobile it is so committed to diversity equity and inclusion as a corporation they include people with disabilities as part of the equation there are several things that T-Mobile is doing and has done we provide a wide range of products and services that break down or reduce communication barriers for individuals who are deaf hard of hearing deaf blind have speech disabilities or intellectual disabilities for example we have captioned telephones these are good for people who may be older and have a hearing loss but still want to use a traditional telephone so they miss some of what's heard on the phone but they can read what was said while they're listening to it we also provide some traditional services and traditional forms we have internet protocol relay this is using an intermediary who I as a deaf person would call an agent or operator communication assistant I would give them the telephone number of the person that I wanted to reach on the phone and then that intermediary would relay that call between the two parties deaf blind people can also make phone calls using this service and it's compatible with Braille readers so deaf blind people are particularly dependent on that service video relay service obviously require sight so someone without sight can't use video relay service we provide conference captioning services an example of that is let's say especially during the pandemic when everyone was working remotely this service allows remote workers to participate in conference calls with captions I could go on and on here in the US we have the FCC the Federal Communication Commission and we also have the ADA the Americans with Disabilities Act Title IV of that requires 24-7 relay service so it must be available at all times that's to bring functional equivalency and functional access to people with a disability because people with disabilities need access on par to those without disabilities to the telecommunications infrastructure so we have a wide range of products and services and these are free to our end users because they're funded through a centralized fund here in the US and that's managed by the Federal Communications Commission which I recently mentioned so an important point I think when we think about ICT and think about cost the cost must be affordable I mean growing up I moved from Jamaica to New York I never got a captioning box for the television captioning wasn't built into televisions like it is today I got my first captioning box when I was 18 my mom couldn't afford it before that and then I got my first TTY machine to make telephone calls when I was 20 I was living in New York City but I was from a poor family so technology was not affordable to us so I'm very thankful to the Americans with Disabilities Act individuals who need access like this now can get these tools free of cost and then I had one final point I wanted to make when we talk about the digital divide there's a project that we are very proud of at T-Mobile called the 10 million project it's an initiative to end that gap between school and home and that digital divide there are millions of households now with children about 15% who do not have internet access so this 10 million project is set up to invest 10.7 million dollars will be invested to provide free Wi-Fi so we're providing free hotspots so these families who are eligible can qualify for the program and get this internet access so many of these families you know include children or young adults with disabilities if you'd like to learn more about that project please go online just Google that project 10 million because we're very very proud of that and last but not least we are on the road to being the largest 5G provider and once 5G is available so many ICT possibilities we'll have doors open thank you wonderful thank you Claudia what an incredible segment every one of you said fantastic things thank you thank you so now we're going to move into a quick segment where we're going to look at a short video on the digital inclusion of indigenous people so let's roll that video leaving no one behind means ensuring that technology is people centered and developed from the bottom up in compliance with universal design and catering for the abilities and needs of all communities including those of the elderly and indigenous peoples these technologies come to position themselves within the communities without considering the proper ways to know, to feel to know, to exchange Digital inclusion is a goal in itself and also a powerful enabler when technology is built and deployed considering the needs and values of these communities it could become a transformative voice for cultural preservation self-determination and empowerment technology needs to be put into the hands of the people who are going to use it but for that training and capacity building are key ITU in collaboration with other institutions has been carrying out comprehensive training programs for indigenous peoples and in so fulfilling the mandate of its members and stakeholders knowledge about how to manage them to then appropriate them and transform them in the way in which the community wants to solve issues or achieve the dreams they have made want to know more visit our website partner with us and let us work together to leave no one behind and no one offline okay well that was a really beautiful video um there have been some great questions um Doreen did you want to come on and answer a question right now? David I think I'll jump in later as we're running slightly behind but please go ahead okay my apologies oh well thank you yeah we are running behind but we're getting great stuff so um what we now are going to talk about is to how do we ensure that technology is people centered and developed from bottom up very pertinent to the so and also what does it mean for specific target groups so our next panelist Michael Hoden leads the global coalition on aging so Michael what concrete actions do you think should be taken and can be taken to ensure access and accessibility uh for the XICTs for older people which probably includes myself by the way well well thank you David and uh it's a pleasure to be here and to be part of this uh extraordinary event uh we thank everyone uh let me answer the question by reminding how you opened David which is you said here we are on zoom uh you know zoom was founded in 2011 by Eric Want uh as I understand it an American uh who came here from China uh it is that innovation that has now enabled us to one of the platforms to be where we are during 2020 and now 2021 in this pandemic the point I would suggest we all keep in mind is that innovation does not come out of the blue it does not happen without both uh policy regulatory and market support and with funding and it doesn't happen at a moment's notice that's true of telehealth and telemedicine which is another advance that we've seen on technology so my most important message uh is to remind us all about the importance of innovation that is the cornerstone of access of technology for everyone whether you're 22 or 90 whether you're a man or a woman what part of the world you're from we have to think of an ongoing support for innovation uh David should I continue I see you're moving is that is that okay no I was moving because my wife let my dog the dog into the room and I'm worried he's going to try to jump on my lap go ahead well I've left my yellow lab next to me here who's behaving very nicely so I'd like to just make a few other points particularly since this is only the second year that uh older persons have been part of ITU in a more formal way and as we all know it's through the WISIS process the World Summit on Information Society which of course is starting now as well number one literally as we speak here we are also launching the decade of healthy aging the WHO sister organization ITU obviously and the UN itself and literally one of the events that I missed this morning because I'm here with all of us is the first report on ageism out by the UN WHO which highlights the importance of the need for that accessibility for all of us again whether we're 82 or 22 secondly to remind everyone that when we think about this quote unquote aging topic even though in the UN we refer to older persons there are really two elements to it one is yes older persons we will have 2 billion of us on the planet over 60 in the next couple of decades 2 billion so that's not like a small number and is a very large percentage which comes to the second point namely that there are more old than young in OECD countries and globally which include all the countries represented here with the world in the next decade or so there will be more old than young and so if we're thinking about fiscal sustainability for society we have to think about the silver economy and think about it in terms of technology and ICTs technology and innovation are central to both of these major points around fiscal sustainability and also around the enabling of access and I guess a final point I would leave us all with is in general whatever you thought about older people is wrong you know older people come in many different forms and sizes and if you think about certainly in many societies around the world Japan is a good example we now have an expectation of a 100 year life so if we think of this demographic as being from 60 to 100 that's 40 years that's like putting everyone from 20 to 60 together David you and I might be a little different than you know a 90 year old who may not have had access to technology innovation but might very well do that so we should think about the diversity of this demographic as well and the need that is utterly required I will invite everyone on this webinar about panelists and participants to join us at WISIS we have a hackathon which is focused on this older person's track we will have four platforms one on dementia and Alzheimer's which is one of the great needs of our time almost perfectly correlated with aging, getting old we will have one on transportation and mobility we will have one on fintech and we will have one on frailty so please start hacking on all of those and get involved for the first time ever we will have a WISIS award on healthy aging innovation submit your technology and I invite all of those here and then our panels will be the week of April 12th where of course we'll be communicating with you but technology innovation digital inclusion utterly central to all of our lives from the 1960 90 or older and it is part of our participation in the economy, in society how many of us have been to zoom parties weddings unhappily funerals over the last year and it just shows that this virtual world has very much extended I think there's a new piece of data that just came out that roughly 60% of growth in online purchasing in OECD countries anyway have come from people 60 and older we're streaming so thank you very much we welcome this participation and hope that we can engage with everyone through our global coalition on aging partnership with WISIS and ITU we appreciate very much the opportunity great well thank you so much Michael all of us old people need to start hacking more next Monica Duham of Hear Colors so what concrete actions do you think should be taken to ensure access for the target group that you represent for the ICTs and the internet thank you David and I'm sorry thank you David and thank you for the opportunity for inviting me first of all I would like to highlight something particular about the target group I work with when we hear catch phrases such as 40s are the new 30s 60 the new 50s we're making older adults invisible on one hand is great because I just turned 37 with this new mathematics but on the other hand I still need glasses to read I still have our strategies and it's not going to get any better we have an accelerated pace to use in technology for every aspect of our life and what I felt is I spent most of my time trying to catch up with technology instead of technology working for me and don't take me wrong I think ICTs are the best means to achieve and to empower us especially when thinking about older adults including myself technology is the best equalizer for opportunities and technology needs to be inclusive so answering your question David about concrete actions to be taking to ensure access for older adults I would say two basic things on one hand well three we talk about internet that for sure but that's for everyone if we do not have internet we cannot participate in the digital economy but I see the accessibility and technology appropriation with age we know that we have increase and changes in our limitations we have reduction of visual and hearing capacity we have reduction of motor capabilities so we really need to have accessible ICTs for example the online subscription I use in a shorter term I will need to be able to increase the fun side in order to be able to continue with my subscription my hearing aid will be need to be compatible with my smart TV if I want to continue to entertain myself so ICT accessibility for every product and service in the market is a must and we really need to tackle that on the other hand we need to promote the use of ICTs by older adults and to be successful in promoting the use of technology we need to construct confidence technology must be perceived as useful and easy to use and we all know that it's not always the case although society is becoming increasingly tech savvy there's still a digital divide between older and younger adults and the division is usually specific to new technology ICT are a catalyst for economic and social growth and will bridge to the outside world that we've living it the whole year to reach from the outside world which minimizing impacts of isolation nevertheless it is essential to create according to older person's needs we need to include in the process of developing products and services older adults in order to achieve key inclusion in technology environment for healthy aging investing in healthy aging using ICTs is a scalable mean to provide services and products Michael told about the importance of healthy aging but the well-being of the aging population translate in better mental and physical health and directly impact costs public and for the families finally I read in the ICT report on aging and Michael also talk about the silver economy the value estimated of the silver economy is $17 trillion that incentive to be accessible and inclusive so I bet that all the stores that today I am buying from online would want to keep me as a customer and if they want me to keep them as a customer we will really need to have accessible, usable and inclusive technologies thank you very much David thank you so much Monica and next Lizette Gonzalez Romero will be talking about telecommunications impact on indigenous communities in Mexico and she will be interpreted by Ana Sapulveda who is one of the main organizers of this event so welcome Lizette and tell us what how ICTs can help the indigenous communities that you know so much about what a good day everybody would like to start asking you the following question what type of technology do you want do you have any other type of technology or form of communication you want what type of technology would you like to answer what type of technology would you like to answer what type of technology I'm going to translate that first, sorry. Answering this question implies adopting a critical angle. Reflecting on how technology works. Go ahead. Adelante, por favor. Significa también pensar la tecnología como un hecho social como resultado de una relación entre personas. It also means thinking about technology as the social good. It also means rethinking how we relate to each other. Y sobre todo reflexionar como nos involucramos, como interactuamos y como consumimos dichas tecnologías. And how we interact with it and how we actually use them. Rethinking technology in this way will make us able to make choices and take decisions. How we want to use them and why and in what way. Which also means owning it and adjusting them to the realities of our context and territories. In general terms, it also will help us ensure our quality of life, a better quality of life. I hereby propose the following actions. First of all, I would like to see more efforts to promote community projects. This kind of projects are based on a collective organization. They also develop free technologies. Which make that knowledge increases and gets bigger at the time that we share it. It also encourages schemes based on the concept of an open economy that also is sustainable and respect the environment and natural resources. And are very much related with the defense of the land and natural territories. Second place I also would like to address the issue of accessibility, improving accessibility. It's been talked a lot about increasing access by increasing connectivity and improving bandwidth, but we also need to do efforts on getting more up to date equipment and fit for purpose equipment. And also to adjust equipment to the needs of different sectors of the population. Obviously we need to make these technologies more affordable. And we also need to encourage more training and capacity building, especially for the people who are originally from these communities and also indigenous peoples. Those who do not know cannot choose. Therefore it is important that people also know so they can appropriate and own these technologies. Last but not least is also very important to enable a regulatory environment that is appropriate for these technologies. If we think about communications as a human right and in the spectrum as a part of our natural territories. We are going to build technologies which are going to have a much more human focus. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Lizette and thank you Anna for helping there. Before we move to our next segment I just want to mention to all the speakers we are running considerably late so please be conscious of the time. And now I'd like to bring Danola on to let us know what we're hearing from the youth community that is joining us live so Danola have you gotten any interesting comments or questions from that group. Thank you so much to everyone that's been tweeting. I'm just going to highlight a couple. I know we're running short on time but first thing he's the UN youth and boy who tweeted right at the beginning she said you know we're live now during the third session of the Rotor Addis event and connect to include to discuss how to ensure that no one is left out when we bridge the digital divide with the transformative powers of ICTs. And then I can see some familiar faces tweeting as well from Africa Generation Connect youth group. And we have no saying about the speech by her excellent the president of Ethiopia saying very powerful speech. There were a lot of fans of that speech there. And she also was saying about Joanne's speech agreeing that broadband will be essential like electricity. But then she asked the open question I guess to us all. Do you think it will be achievable anytime soon in Africa. So very interesting there we have our advocates who said post COVID world digital exclusion impacts certain demographics more economically educationally socially as well as their access to other opportunities and also asked a very powerful question there. How could we have survived the clinic. How could we have survived without connectivity during the pandemic. We're still in the pandemic we're still trying to survive. So so we definitely need to think about that one. And finally, I wanted to highlight my tweet by Valerie was one who was quoting something that Claudia Gordon said she said she said access to ICT is more than a privilege it should be a basic human right. Thank you so much to know love the energy of that community. Now we're going to continue with two additional panelists, Professor Anthony Giannumis who is a big picture ICT expert based in Oslo and Roland white who is head of global diversity at Microsoft so let me start with you Professor Giannumis. What are some examples of good solutions for digital inclusion and what can we learn from that. So my example is based on my job title which is all about universal design. So universal design not surprisingly is what I'd advocate for here. It's the one kind of framework that we've discovered that can make digital solutions available to everyone equally. It started back in the 90s, but it is spread all over the planet, the UN has even mainstream universal design and all of their policies and programs. However, human rights law countries around the world have an obligation to put universal design into practice. So what the hell is universal design, it all comes down to four key concepts. Number one, equality. What we want is for everyone to have access to use technology and use technology equally but what we have are these huge digital divides that separate people into these different groups and categories. We mentioned people in rural environments, women and girls, but we of course also have to deal with this issue of disability age. We have to deal with racial and ethnic minorities all of whom experience disadvantages when it comes to accessing and using technology. So universal design is a framework for helping to close those digital divides. The second key concept here is diversity. Now we hear diversity a lot, everybody's talking about diversity, but diversity isn't just a checklist. It's not just, oh, we have this person on the team, we have this person on the team. We have to recognize that diversity is about a person's complete identity. So we need to take an intersectional approach to understanding marginalization and disadvantage. What this comes down to is that a woman with a disability will experience barriers accessing and using technology because of her disability and her gender. And her experience will be very different than a man with a disability or a woman without a disability. Another key concept here is accessibility and usability. Now you might be thinking those are two different things. No, they are interconnected. It doesn't do anyone any good to have access to the internet if they cannot use a computer and having access to a computer isn't helpful if you can't use the web. Number four, participation. Historically, technology was only usable for an elite group of technical experts. Now we expect everyone to be able to use technology. And it used to be like that with technology development. Technology developers used to be an elite group of people who had highly technical skills, but now anyone with a base level of digital skills can create technology on their own. So ensuring that we have a diverse group of people who are contributing to the ways that technologies are created is critical for universal design. Now I live and work in Norway. Here, universal design is part of our human rights. And on May 28, we're celebrating the first annual universal design day. And you can find out more about this in our network of universal design professionals at our website, universal dot design. Thank you, David. Thank you so much, Anthony. And I had a barking dog that I've had removed. Yay. Roland, tell us what you've learned as head of global diversity at Microsoft about digital inclusion. Yeah, so thanks. I think this is a brilliant partnership here because you call it universal design we call it inclusive design. It's the same thing in the name. So when Satya started in Microsoft five years ago, we involved our mission statement to empower every person organization on the planet to achieve more. And that's not just our customers, but the customers of our customers. But more importantly, those people with zero access to technology. And just like we've seen in the chat room, it's almost like a human right, electricity, food, water, broadband, all of these things are becoming essential for everybody and people shouldn't be limited based on where they live. So one of the things that Microsoft is very passionate about is to ensure that we help enable people through technology around the world, and we actually create additional ways for people to use technology and improve their lives. So we also don't believe that there should be levels of privilege in technology. So one of the things I know I know we've spoken about teams today, but I actually wanted to talk about Office 365 and Skype. We have inclusive design in everything we build. So we do not believe in meeting a criteria we believe in blasting that criteria out the water. But the challenge is people don't know about this stuff, because they don't challenge themselves to use it. You know you might have an iPhone you might have a phone you only try to stretch to your where you want to explore, but you don't actually practice dictating your emails, or actually having your emails dictated to you. You don't practice pinch and zoom when you can't read a menu etc. Within Office 365 within teams, all of our products are. I don't like to use the word fully accessible because everything can be more accessible, but highly accessible with many, many features and we do this as a standard and we encourage people to use it because also as users are products. You're also part of the design criteria, because within our inclusive design methodology, we invite you to tell us what can be better. So for example, many of the disabled the communities but within the African American African American and Caribbean background. We're talking to us about some of the facial recognition pro challenges within using cameras, and some of the difficulties they were having using some of the eye gaze technology. And so this is where input from users is critical for our inclusive design. The last part of this though is about giving back to society and changing society. You were talking a bit about the older generation, I still count myself as a young man, I hope to anyway, but unless all of us on this community actually start going into schools and colleges and with parents and teaching about this from day one. We will continue to have this stigma over the next generations. So Microsoft give loads of free training available on our websites around coding for girls that code minorities that code, even getting back into work around cloud and AI. But it's just break the stigma of these things show what's possible using technology, instead of how it's restricted. And then we'll get to the value of we believe in Microsoft that actually a disability is caused when there's a mismatch between human requirements and technology. And all of us have that ability to actually create everything to an ability and make the world better for everybody. So thank you for asking. Thank you so much Roland and Microsoft doing so many impressive things these days. Thank you for being here. I'd like to bring back on screen our good friend Sango. So, Sango, what have you got for us this time? Now we're going to watch a video on how the pandemic is pushing more and more children to learn from home and how important that online protection is. Let's roll the video. At the peak of the pandemic, more than 190 countries closed the doors of their schools to 94% of learners worldwide, creating the largest mass disruption of education in history. Many governments reacted with an overnight shift to online learning. But the reality is that globally, two in three children and young people do not have access to the internet at home. Those children were disproportionately impacted by the global shutdowns as they were unable to continue their education. And those lucky enough to have connectivity at home had to adjust to new ways of learning, socializing and in many cases to an increased exposure to online risks and potential harms. Safe digital access of all children to the online environment must be a top national priority. For many years, Child Online Protection has been at the top of ITU's agenda. ITU's Child Online Protection guidelines provide a comprehensive set of recommendations on how to contribute to the development of a safe and empowering online environment for children and young people. To protect children online, we need data, new technologies, harmonized frameworks, international cooperation and increased investment. We also need global awareness, and more importantly, we need to listen to children and young people. They must be part of the solution. What is your country doing to protect children and young people online at school and at home? What is your sector doing for a safer and child-friendly internet? What is the global community doing to endorse and implement the COP guidelines? And what can you do to ensure safe learning never stops? Thank you, Sango, for that powerful video. And just to our next guest, I'm really happy to welcome Hans Vestberg. It's been working so hard on many of the issues that we've been hearing about today. And I'd really like to welcome you, Hans. It's terrific to see you here and to be here with you. You're leading an unprecedented effort to achieve digital inclusion for all, which began in January at the World Economic Forum's Davos Dialogues. So tell us about the Edison Alliance and what you're working on. Thank you, David, and thank you all for such a great contribution during this discussion. We all know and we're heard of all the speakers that the pandemic has such a tremendous impact on society. I would like to focus on two. One is, of course, that we have been set back when it comes to achieving the sustainable development goals. We have been set back because of the economical pandemic and all of that, which is just extremely tough. The second one I want to focus on is that we have leapfro. And we've heard it from so many. We have leapfro probably five to seven years in the digitalization. Things that we have been talking of, they happen immediately when this pandemic came out. It has never been more important to be connected and all speakers have been talking about that. But still we have 3.6 billion people that are not connected in the world. So it's a big challenge to get access to what I call the 21st century infrastructure, mobility, broadband and cloud. And we're actually running the risk to actually increasing the digital divide and that will hit the most vulnerable. And that's what we heard from many of the previous speakers that this is going to hit for people that is very vulnerable in this situation. Because in the future and already now, if you're not connected, you're not part of our society. You cannot get access to train, to education, to working from home, to healthcare and just being connected to your friends. So I think this is the moment where we need to understand the challenge. And I heard it from several of you. So the challenge is the accessibility of the technology is the affordability and it's a usability devices and application that is really supporting it. And that's why we decided to work with the World Economic Forum and make a platform of a multi stakeholder multi sector private public initiative because it's not only one organization that can solve this. It's several different using it in order to scale the digitalization across the globe and a single mission for the Edison Alliance is actually to increase the digital inclusion in our society worldwide. And we will focus initially on health, education and financial inclusion. Experts in all these areas represented both in public and private sector in order to scale this and actually advocate and find the best solution. Not maybe invent all the things but scale them across borders and we're heard on many good examples here that can be scalable. And the problem we'll have today is that we don't know how much good solutions throughout there and how we can do it. So that's what we're doing. We have a multi year program that's going to go seven years. We have put up tough targets for ourselves to achieve and improve. And of course we work with all important organizations like it you the broadband Commission years and may from the technology point of view that can already have done quite a lot. So we're encouraged about we have people from all these sectors coming in public and private to help to doing this. So I'm encouraged and I always talked about we needed the 18th goal of the Sustainable Development Goals and that's actually connectivity. Now we don't have an 18th goal, but we have enormous force and platform and understanding how important the digital inclusion is in our society to be part of it. And it should matter where you're born where you live and where you come from, you should have the same opportunities. We have our chance in a lifetime because everybody understand the importance of this infrastructure right now and to doing what we need to do. And I can only echo what Doreen said and money others have said connectivity is a basic human right. And it's more important than now than never. So that's what we focus on in Edison Alliance. We have kicked it off in the beginning of the year. And I said it's a multi year work that we will do together with World Economic Forum. Thank you so much, Hans. I think in the six years since the goals were adopted, the consciousness of the importance of connectivity has really changed. I'm sure if they were being adopted now, there would be an 18th goal on connectivity. No question, not 9B or whatever the heck it is. But we understand now and your leadership has been valuable. I'm sure many people here will be getting behind the Edison Alliance's work. So thank you for joining us. Great to see you. Thank you, David. Now I'd like to invite Doreen to join us again and talk a little bit about a key element for achieving so much of what we talked about today. And that is partnerships. So Doreen, what's what are some examples of partnerships for digital inclusion and after Doreen speaks we'll hear from Otman on the same topic so Doreen. Thank you. Thank you, David. And it's a great moment to jump in because Hans has sort of just set this up for me by citing some really good examples that are out there from the Broadband Commission to the Edison Alliance. I would say that there's growing recognition that partnership needs to be right at the center as Hans was saying, of every digital development strategy. I think that's what the UNSG was advancing with the launch of the digital cooperation roadmap. And of course for the ITU partnership I think is at the heart of our work. It's in our DNA, we're the only UN agency that actually has private sector membership and I think it's critical to the effectiveness of our work here at the ITU bringing governments private sector academia and civil society together. So whether it's our smart village 2.0 initiative I want to mention with the government of Niger, a range of partners from the UN from the private sector civil society, which is bringing innovative meaningful and accessible digital solutions to villages in the future by taking a holistic approach that makes the digital platforms the real foundation for health services for education, agricultural management practices, and much more. An example and Pumsili noted it are equals global partnership and many of you are are part of it co-founded by the ITU, UN Women, ITC, GSMA and UNU are now counting over 100 partners and we work together to help women get access to ICTs be better equipped with digital skills to benefit from greater leadership opportunities in the digital sector. And lastly, I want to mention our our GIGA initiative with UNICEF and others to connect every school on the planet to the internet and every young person to information opportunity and choice. And this effort is is critically important now as we've heard about the challenges that learners are facing because of the lack of connectivity. So these are just some examples David they're bearing fruit and I would like to invite you to join us. So that together we can make universal digital inclusion a reality. Thank you back to you. Thanks Doreen it is inspiring the number of partnerships that are emerging and we just heard about a major one from Hans as you said and there's so many others the GIGA initiative is great too. Uttman, Uttman Almar from the MISC Foundation. Tell us from your perspective, what is the importance of partnerships for us to achieve some of these great things we're talking about in this program today and welcome. Thank you. Hi David. Hello everyone on the call. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening wherever you are on the world. I know that currently we are over the time schedule. But I would like to double click on what Doreen has mentioned earlier, which is really the emphasis on actually engaging and partnering with the people and more specifically, and within my experience is young people. Now, what we know generally is that young people are digital natives, but we don't know or perhaps many of us don't know is that young people actually constitute approximately 50% of the world population. And 90% of young people live in developing countries. And what it means to be a young person has shifted drastically in COVID. Before COVID, what it means to be young was actually very difficult being young before COVID and that includes education, employment, mental health and many other challenges. After COVID, the challenges have not only become dire, they have become critical. And yet, one way where these young people could be catalyzed and prepared for the future is through digital inclusion. Now my experience specifically last year was I was a chair of the youth 20 engagement group. And in the youth 20 engagement group, I had the role of bringing in 77 different delegations from 23 different countries and international organizations and submitting together our own community, which is basically a document including the policies that what we would like as young people in G 20 countries to be included to world leaders. And foremost among that was digital inclusion and representation. But this all would not have happened if the G 20 countries have not come together. And therefore the role of partnership is ridiculously important, because it removes redundancies, it increases synergies and brings about many voices. Now there are, for example, within G 20 infrastructure, or group, there is a group called the digital economy task force. They focus a lot on the IT use message and delivery. And I would like to end with thanking the ITU for partnering with young people on their generation connect advisory board. Thank you. Thank you, what one, it really is fantastic the variety of people we've had here today on on this conversation about such a critical set of issues, and I do think the human element has really been coming out so thank you to Doreen and everyone for organizing it I mean, we're close to finishing here but as we've done in the past, we're going to ask each panelist to tell us in just one word, what they would like to see coming out of the WTDC conference. So I'm going to go through and ask each of them just to quickly give us their word. So Doreen let's start with you. I'm going to say leadership leadership leadership. Okay, it will say transformation. Thank you, Emma action action with Mike on thank you. Joanne access is my word. Good word. Judith impact. Thank you, Michael. Innovation. Nice. Awareness. Good. Lisette. Please, please, you can turn on your microphone. Sometimes does that. Zoom often can be frustrating. Please say your word, please, for the question. In a word, please, what do you want to see coming out of the WTDC conference in Ethiopia, please. Let's try to come back to Lizette in a second. Okay. Roland. Curiosity. We've got a great variety of words. Representation. Thank you. Hans. Hans is still with us. Maybe not. Just a second ago. Oh, well, he's a big CEO. So that's understandable. Anthony. Universal design all one word. That's that's cheating, but I think we'll allow it. And Lizette, have you gotten your mic on yet. If you can give your word to Anna in the chat. Accessibility. So she told me her computer is frozen. Her word is accessibility. Okay. Well, thank you, Lisette. All right. So, so then, then Anna has the great challenge of putting together a word together a word cloud really fast using all those words. And while she's doing that, I'd like to turn the floor back to Doreen for her closing remarks. Thank you, David and thank you everyone. This has been really an amazing session. I think we had almost 400 participants at one point and I know hundreds and hundreds following live on Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. So thank you everyone. It's been amazing and I've learned so much. David, just my, perhaps my quick takeaways, the importance of a people-centered approach. We heard that from the very beginning, from the Ethiopian president herself, leaving no one behind in the digital world, means ensuring that technology is people-centered. Joanne stressed the endless opportunities that tech has opened for her. Those that invest in tech should be thinking about it, about the human aspects. She said broadband is as vital as motorways. That's great, Joanne. Monica spending most of her time, as she noted, all of us do, trying to catch up with tech rather than tech working for us. I hear you, thank goodness I have tech savvy children. Tech needs to be inclusive was Monica's point and we need to be thinking about the needs of older adults while we're developing technology. We heard from many the importance of communications as a human right. Lizette also mentioned spectrum as part of our territories. We're going to build technologies that have much more human focus. Claudia access to ICTs is more than a privilege. It should be considered a right. George diverse groups of people contributing to the way tech is created. This is necessary for universal design or as Microsoft calls it, inclusive design. Judith diversity is our reality. Inclusion is a choice. That's great. Claudia, we must innovate, sorry, not for persons with disabilities, but with. And I think David, we heard that with throughout that we can't be developing things for people but with them regardless of whether it's a gender issue or a disability issue, an elderly person issue. That inclusive development and design is absolutely critical. Michael stressed innovation as the cornerstone for access to technology for everyone. Roland, all of us have the ability to contribute to that ability and make the world work better for everyone. I love that and Hans, this is the moment. I stress this is the moment of the importance of partnerships, the affordability, accessibility, usability and of course that 18th SDG which is the hidden SDG connectivity that cuts across the other 17 goals. Othman, again, linked to partnerships working together and bringing that fundamental view from the youth. And again, thank you so much everyone. It's been amazing. Thank you for the great comments and the chat, the questions. I think David, we had representation from all parts of the world, all time zones and I really wanna thank everyone. Back to you, David. Okay, thank you, Doreen. And I made a mistake and there's so many people here to manage my apologies but we miss two people with their words. Darn, okay. First of all, Danola, I hope you're still out there. Please come on and tell us your word. My word was transformation but I wanted to highlight the most popular word that came out when we did the survey with the Generation Connect Africa Youth Group and that was inclusion. Inclusion is a very good word. And Claudia also, I hope Claudia is still here so I can ask her for her word and my apologies to Claudia for leaving you out. My word is representation and someone else already said it so it did get added to the cloud. That means it'll be bigger in the cloud. I would say relatable. So I guess maybe, how about if we say meaningful representation? All right, well thank you and my apologies for the delay. Now, I wanna go to Jim Rogers so that Jim can show us what he's been doing. Remember, he's been drawing this entire time. So show us you're drawing Jim and somebody else has to see my dog but he's gone now, so sorry about that. But if Jim is here. Come on, I know Jim is here. So let's see his screen. Okay, here we go. Here we go. So tell us about that, Jim. Yeah, it was a really great session. There was a lot of great points but some of the most important things that stood out to me were ITC should be a right and not a privilege. There must be affordable. We need to construct confidence. Accessibility should be for all, whether you're 62 or 22. Yeah, and the big one for me was the two in three children have no broadband access while 190 countries have schools closed. Really big one for me. Yeah, I think it's a great session, some great points. And this graphic will be available after the fact as will the whole video of this session. It's amazing what you can capture in one image, Jim. So thank you for that. I really am impressed at your talents and also fitting it exactly into the space allotted. There's a lot of ideas to put in there. Everyone had a lot of good input and figured just about that. Okay, well, I'm told Anna is ready with the word cloud. She's very fast. So let's see the word cloud, Anna. Thank you so much, Jim. And just so you know, the word cloud that we're about to see is going to continue growing with every event on the road to Addis and it will be compiled by the end and presented at WTDC in Addis Ababa in November. So remind everybody our next stop on this road to Addis will be April 28th, where we'll be talking particularly about financing, super important, maybe not quite as powerful as today because today was so much about the people, as I said, but financing without it, we cannot make these great human things possible. So that's gonna be a super important session and I hope you'll all come and I guarantee you that the wonderful people who've been working on this will make that fascinating as well. So there's the word cloud from today, accessibility, our biggest word, transformation, wow. Beautiful and the word cloud continues to grow. So thank you all for being here. Thank you for allowing me to participate and see you on April 28th and especially hope to see you in November in Addis Ababa. I hope I didn't forget anything else. Thank you all so much. Have a great time wherever in the world you may be. And thank you, David.