 I think that's my cue. So good afternoon everybody. It's an enormous pleasure to be here with you this afternoon and I'm really excited about this virtual exchange this afternoon which is the third and final session of the 2023 global DASPA virtual exchanges on innovative tools to boost development. Now as you know at IOM we're deeply committed to engaging with you as DASPA members and empowering DASPA communities through consultations and capacity building activities. Now this year in the exchanges we responded directly to the interests from DASPA organisations to keep developing their communications skills in project development and I'm really pleased to announce that during the first two webinars that took place earlier this year DASPA's and key partners were able to share the best practices on how to create impactful messages and communicate with partners efficiently through the project cycle. We've really learned from you in the past exchanges and that DASPA's have a unique ways of communicating. We know that you have powerful narratives and impactful stories that enable us to navigate and understand multiple cultural and social contexts as you communicate across generations and across communities. In this edition of the global DASPA virtual exchanges we've also heard from young DASPA members connecting and creating compelling messages through social media and digital channels and in this regard we're really very happy to have partnered with the migration using and children platform in these exchanges to showcase the active role that DASPA's play or young DASPA's play into achieve security justice climate resilience and sustainable development for all as highlighted in the UN youth strategy. For me it's really a privilege to witness and be part of this pro process of co-creating conditions for migrants and DASPA's to fully contribute to the sustainable development objectives as stated in objective 19 of the GCM or the global compact on migration GCM. Together we're responding to their needs the Inca systems of collaboration and system attesting channels of communication and sharing best practices. Now before giving the floor to our wonderful panelists this afternoon I'd like to share with you six principles of impactful ideas. According to health Heath and health two communication experts ideas that are simple stick unexpected concrete credible and emotional. DASPA's have the unique capacity apologies I will unmute. DASPA's have the unique capacity to captivate the audiences with their personal stories ownership and by creating empathy and appealing to their identities. As you've highlighted in these last past months tailoring these messages is fundamental for effective communication and IOM is committed to keep developing trainings and tools to offer the opportunity to policymakers governments and partners to learn and create these compelling and engaging stories on the migration experience using your voice and I'd like to take this opportunity to launch global DASPA module on the Global Media Migration Academy supported by the Government of Ireland. This new course impacts the complex term DASPA and presentables and best practices on how to use the term in the mass media. This course also offers some guidance on how to identify relevant DASPA actors and explores mechanisms through which DASPA actors and voices can be directly reflected or incorporated into the media. I encourage you strongly to register and start this training course today. Today in the last session on innovative tools we look forward to learning more on how communication digital tools are so relevant for DASPA engagement and how can DASPA's adapt to the fast evolution of communication tools and methods. The global DASPA virtual exchanges have been really a very critical and important enriching experience to support these collaborative journeys. For those of you who have been part of this process from the beginning a really big thank you. DASPA is a key partners for development and humanitarianism and it really is my great pleasure to observe the impact of structured channels of collaboration such as this one. Now I would like to give the floor to Kazim Ojoyi from the Global DASPA Confederation who along with Maria Dolores Delgado Carte will co-facilitate this position. Thank you ever so much for being with us today and best of luck for this afternoon's dialogue. Thank you everyone. Thanks so much Elizabeth. That was a great welcoming speech from you. Thanks a lot. I have the pleasure to introduce our speakers to you. My name is Kazim Ojoyi and I'm the treasurer of the GDC Global DASPA Confederation and the first person I would like to maybe I should first start with the introduction also the deputy director of the general deputy director general of the ALHEM just shortly so that you can know. On the 31st of May 2021 Ugochi Daniels was appointed as high HEMS deputy director general operations taken office on 1st of September 2021. Ugochi Daniels is a senior executive with over 27 years of diverse managerial experience with donor and United Nations entities academia as well as private sector institutions. Ugochi Daniels was named as a share of the of the United Nations for championing women's health needs in humanitarian emergencies. She rose to defend the vulnerable and fight for human rights, command forces and build coalitions for peace and take on what surface challenges. Ugochi Daniels carrier with the United Nations span almost two decades prior to joining ALHEM. Ugochi Daniels was the chief of staff at the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees UNRWA. She was also the United Nations resident coordinator and designator official for security in the Islamic Republic of Iran from 2018 to 2020. From 2013 to 2018 Ugochi Daniels was the chief of humanitarian and fragile context branch at the United Nations Population Fund UNFPA headquarters. As teams at UNFPA includes assignments in the Philippines, country representative 2019 to 2013 and Nepal deputy representative 2017 to 2010. Miss Daniels joined UNFPA in 2002 as the deputy program manager for Africa Youth Alliance 2002 to 2007. So we have Maria here as co-moderator and myself as also co-moderating and we have speakers here, the first speaker on my list is Whitney Wusor. She's the president at Nigerian Youth in the Netherlands. Whitney is the president and public relations officer of the Nigerian Youth in the Netherlands, a registered organization promoting the voice and visibility of young and blended Nigerians resident in the Netherlands. The second person is Yasmina Beslima, which is a gender specialist at migration youth and children platform. Yasmina Beslimane is a feminist activist and consultant with a strong commitment to advancing gender equality including in the migration context. Our research interests include international refugee law, refugee protection in the global style, extra regional migration in the Americas, and gender-based violence in the migration context killed in advocacy, communications, and media. Human rights policy analysis, research, and writing. Yasmina has accumulated over six years of professional experience in the migration field with national human rights institutions, NGOs, and United Nations agencies. In several countries including Ireland, UNHCR, UNDP, and the Migration Policy Institute. She is currently the gender specialist at the Migration Youth and Children Platform, UNNGCY. The last person on my list is Manuel Meneses, Sustainability Professional and Founder of Daspora 2030 MX. Manuel is a sustainability professional with over 12 years of experience shaping and implementing sustainable development projects and partnerships. As co-founder of CERCLO, a pioneering social innovation consulting firm in the Latin America, Manuel has delivered over 60 successful projects across seven countries. He is now a senior manager at the Global Reporting Initiative, GRI, which provides the world's most trusted and widely used standards for sustainability reporting. Manuel is also a member of the Mexican Talent Network in the Netherlands and a creator of Daspora 2030, a platform for open conversations and engagement with practitioners of sustainable development from the Mexican diaspora. Manuel holds a degree international relations from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and an MSc innovation for sustainable international development from the University of Success in the UK. Thank you very much, Azul, and the bottom, Maria. Thank you. Thank you, Kazim, just very quickly. Thank you so much for taking the time of presenting all our great panelists. Unfortunately, DDG could not make it today, so on behalf of her, we're really happy and honored to be in this space, and that's some of the the points that Liz warned was also sharing today on behalf of DDG, but I'm really excited to learn more from you, and thank you so much, everyone, for being here. Hello, everybody. I am Maria Delgado, and I am representing today the Global Diaspora Confederation and Commoderating with Kazim today's session. I'm very happy and honored to be here for being granted this opportunity for Commoderation of this third last session of the Global Diaspora Virtual Exchanges 2023. And before we jump into the discussion and the questions, I would like to remind you of the survey that will be available after this session. We are very grateful and keen to hear your feedback after the session. And for all of those who are listening to us, please feel free to use the chat to express, to write your comments, questions, to participate, and maybe as a first little exercise, I would like to ask you where are you joining us from? So just to have an idea of the geographies we are covering today. So now let's start with the questions of today. The first question is, why are digital tools relevant for diaspora engagement and why are they unique? So each speaker will have around three minutes to answer those questions. And I would like, we need to start with you. You represent at your organization. And most of your members are probably digital natives. So for your organization that speaking about digital tools might seem very obvious. But I would like to hear your thoughts about this. Hi, Maria. Thank you very much. And good afternoon to everybody tuning in right now. I'm really glad to be here. So I will just answer shortly and briefly, briefly for the sake of time. Yes, the Nigerian youth in the Netherlands, we cater to mostly youths from 18 to 45. So I think the most people here listening right now already know what digital tool we would mostly use. But we still try to use Facebook and maybe calls and emails just to reach out to people in our community that are not really internet savvy, have Instagram or Facebook. And at the same time, I also think digital tools are unique. They provide unprecedented opportunities for us to break barriers when it comes to distance, when it comes to cultural barriers, we're able to break that, not minding how far it is. And I think that they are also unique and essential for desperate engagements because they provide a powerful platform for connecting people across all geographical levels and cultural boundaries as well. So whether it's through social media or online forums or online conferencing, digital tools allow the possibility for communities to stay connected and share information, keep up with one another and know what's happening around them, or yeah, around them or far away from them. So yes, I think these tools are very helpful to help us, you know, bridge our communication gap, especially. That's very important. So we build a communication gap and it develops and helps with entrepreneurship as well when it comes to diaspora communities. So yes, that's my quick and brief answer to that. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Then I would like to continue with Justmina. Justmina, you also work with young people, with children and youngs. What are your thoughts about this? And maybe you can also mention a little bit about the importance of digital tools when covering different geographies. Yes, of course. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for having me here today. It's such a pleasure to be here and also to share this stage with very inspiring people from all across the world. So in my opinion, digital tools are extremely relevant for the diaspora engagement because they offer this unique opportunity to bridge the gap between the diaspora and their country of origins. So I'm originally from Morocco, but I've moved out since I was 18, so a bit over 10 years ago. And I do most of my work on the digital space. My organization politics for her works only remotely. So everything we do is through digital tools. And you know, like since we're so increasingly connected, it's also possible for the diaspora to engage in real time with our home countries to share information, to advocate for our rights. That's something that we've been doing a lot with the Moroccan diaspora abroad. And it's beautiful to see so many, especially since COVID-19 hit. We've seen a lot of pages of young advocates that are standing for different issues, whether it is women's rights or whether it is encouraging political participation. And a lot of them are from the diaspora. So I do think that it's a unique opportunity to enable the diaspora to transcend those physical boundaries, to connect with each other and come back stronger, you know. And even like engage with our own issues related to our countries, even if we're not physically there. Of course, we need to be mindful of the digital divide, especially within the African continent, which remains a challenge. And we also must continue to work towards closing this gap and ensure that everyone has access to these tools because there is digital connectivity. But is it meaningfully connected? Do you really have access to the internet or to digital technologies or just to a smartphone to be able to be digitally engaged? So we need to be mindful of that as well. But overall, that's my perspective. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes, Meena. And then last but not least for this question, Manuel, you're coming from Mexico to express the diversity that we have in this audience. I would like to ask you the question in Spanish. So Manuel, ¿Por qué son las herramientas digitales importantes para promover el trabajo en la diaspora? ¿Y por qué piensas que son únicas, que son tan relevantes? Bueno, pues muchísimas gracias, María Dolores. Y muchísimas gracias a los organizadores de este evento por la invitación. Me da muchísimo gusto ver a la gente que nos acompaña, compartir el espacio con otras personas que también tienen historias y experiencias muy interesantes. Y me gusta contar historias. Entonces trataré de dentro de estos tres minutos contar un par de ellas. Por ahí de 2009 tuve oportunidad de entrevistar a un señor que se llama Sam Pitroda. En ese momento Sam Pitroda era asesor para el primer ministro de India en temas de innovación. Le preguntaba Sam Pitroda y por cierto, India es el país con la mayor diaspora a nivel mundial. México es el segundo país con la mayor diaspora a nivel mundial. Había un gran debate en torno a la fuga de cerebros. Y le preguntaba, ¿cómo ven ustedes este tema de la fuga de cerebros? Y me dijo algo que se me quedó grabado, lo voy a decir en inglés. Dijo, el tema es, how do you take brain drain and turn it into brain gain through brain chain? Entonces, ¿cómo tomas la fuga de cerebros y generas conexiones entre estos cerebros, entre estas mentes, a través de encadenar? Se me quedó muy grabado y pues bueno, qué decir, 2009 desde entonces pensar todo lo que ha progresado las herramientas digitales, el uso de las herramientas digitales que ha contribuido justamente a generar este encadenamiento de cerebros de una manera que no ha sido posible antes. Fue muy interesante, ya lo mencionaba Yasmina, la pandemia de COVID-19 porque no solo aceleró la adopción de estas herramientas de un día para otro, millones de personas estaban uniéndose a webinars, estaban tomando cursos en línea, pero mucho más importante creo que contribuyó a acelerar y a transformar la manera en que nos relacionamos y en que colaboramos, tendiendo puentes también como ya se mencionaba. Un ejemplo claro, soy parte de una red global de mexicanos en el exterior que se forma con capítulos en diferentes ciudades alrededor del mundo que se conectan y colaboran en México con nodos en diferentes estados del país. En 2019, pre-pandemia, asistía una reunión de estos capítulos a nivel europeo y asistíamos los que éramos invitados porque la sede era la embajada y no caben todas las personas, los que teníamos posibilidad de viajar en esas fechas y pues finalmente la discusión estaba limitada a quienes participaban. Posteriormente, por todos estos cambios, la discusión se volvió y la reunión se volvió virtual y esto abrió la oportunidad para que más personas pudieran participar, pudieran contribuir. Dentro de ese contexto es que nace el proyecto que empecé en 2019 de Diaspora 2030 MX que tiene la intención de dar a conocer las contribuciones que mexicanas y mexicanos en el exterior están haciendo al desarrollo sostenible y conectarlos con otros mexicanos y mexicanas que están interesados no sólo en inspirar porque no buscamos sólo inspirar sino llevar a la acción, generar colaboraciones. Este proyecto no sería posible sin las herramientas digitales y sin todos los cambios que muy brevemente menciono. Ya después estaré compartiendo porque ya no me quiero pasar de los tres minutos. Gracias, María Dolores. Muchísimas gracias Manuel. And yeah, I will hand over to Casim now. I just want to mention sorry that I forgot before when we switch to another language, you have the possibility to choose the interpretation channel of your preferred language in Zoom. There is a bottom in the bottom where you can select the channel then. Then Casim, I hand over to you for the second question. Thanks so much, Maria. I mean, we are really in time. I can say we are not too much short of time. So I want to give us a little bit about the objective of this exchange so that we all know what are the key skills that a communicator needs to have when approaching learners and delivering a pitch, what skill and characteristics make the Aspera community unique communicators, why are interpersonal skills relevant to deliver impactful messages, which channels of communication are the most effective? So those are, well, I mean, three objectives for this global exchange. And I will go to the question. The question is, how can the Asperas adapt to the fast evolution of communication tools and methods? And let me call on Yesmina to start this soon. And then, Yesmina, the floor is yours. Give us your experience on this question. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for asking this question. I think that's in order for us to adapt to this fast evolution of communication tools, but also methods, it requires constant learning, collaboration and innovation. And in that aspect, diaspora communities, they really need to be proactive in identifying and leveraging new digital tools and platforms as they emerge. Because we've seen that, especially since the pandemic, there's been an increase of new digital tools and technologies that have been appearing. And in order to do this, I think it's very essential to build networks of experts, of peers, who can share the best practices, what they've learned, their knowledge. And this is something that we do also within my organization, we do a lot of capacity building and exchange. And it's very important also to be flexible and be willing to experiment new things. We've experimented some new digital platforms, but sometimes it doesn't work out. And that's okay. I think it's part of the process. And also stay up to date with the latest trends, the latest developments, and keep on collaborating, especially with those that are back home, and keep on amplifying their voices. I think also the funding aspect and the investment is really key, whether it is through capacity building or through financial compensation, through funds, it's really key in order to bring us all together and make sure that there's not this divide. Because sometimes I get told, oh, you don't live in Morocco. You don't get to talk about Morocco. Like you're not here. But it's not true. I'm really attached to my identity. I'm really attached to my country of origin. And it's not because I'm abroad that I cannot advocate for a better Morocco or a better change within our country. So I think it's really important also to come together and prioritize the collaboration over the competition and the division. Thank you so much for bringing that in so concrete. I saw a lot of points in what you just said. And yeah, it is clear, diaspora organizations are seen by those ones that they are represented differently. And those ones that are also in the diaspora may have lost maybe some touch with the home country. And organizations like yours and those people were actively diaspora-actual bridge builders between these two areas. And you are very, very good on that. I mean, it's perfect to talk about capacity building, bringing people together. And if you go to a question, I mean, how can you adapt fast in the evolution of so much communication? I mean, Zoom was so good when corona came in. Team solidified the whole thing also. There are many ways to collaborate. And I think if we want to keep that gap and always be on top and I mean, learn new things we need to do for collaboration, learning building network, share best practices, like you said, and stay up to date. I mean, I just tried to bring that together. I will pass on this question to one of our speakers. That is Whitney. Whitney, with your work that you are doing in the Netherlands, I mean, you are dealing with young people and Nigerians. I'm sure you're also dealing with some other African people. You have connections to them in terms of your work and the coverage. The question again, I mean, from you, I would like to know how you think diasporas can adapt to the evolution of communication and the methodology, I mean, the methods that they use to do this. Thank you very much. I'm happy to receive this question because, yeah, we do get it a lot. And I mean, sometimes they were asked, yeah, how come do you know so much happening in your country? But it's true social media. So we try to tell people to first recognize that there is social media because social media is a very powerful tool. I just heard from Yasmina, how people tell her, yeah, you don't get to speak about Morocco, but she can just be in her room and get whatever news she wants to get from just not going into social media. So I would say, first you need to recognize social media, then you need to take advantage, and then you have to grasp it. So because diasporas can really just adapt to the fast evolution of communication with social media and methods by embracing these digital technologies into their daily lives, which is very important. So and with a rapid pace of technology innovation, the essential for no diaspora communities, we have to stay up to date with the latest communication. And again, how do we do that through social media? I know some people would say, yeah, I don't understand how social media works. I don't understand how to get the latest news from the internet, but you have people who are social media savvy around you and you have a smartphone. And what I find very annoying sometimes is that people use phones that are smarter than them. And that's not how it's supposed to be. You're supposed to be able to use your phone because you bought that phone with your money. So you're supposed to be able to use it to its full potential and advantage. So if you think, okay, there is a new social media platform around and I don't know how to go around it. Maybe you can ask someone who has knowledge about it to help you. So yeah, in short, I would just say really try your best everybody to get used to understanding what the digital is for because it will help us build our communities. I mean, this question is probably just similar to the first one. It will help us build our community and help collaborate on projects when we work with different organizations that have the same value as us or maybe not. So yeah, diaspora can communicate with it. Thank you. I cannot hear you anymore. Oh, sorry, I was still muted. That's so good with me. Thanks so much for bringing that together also. I mean, you also spoke about networking with people around you, especially people that are a little bit older, from 40 maybe upwards, they may feel like, oh, this is just too much, too many things there. I have to learn teams, I have to learn Zoom, I have to learn many other things. Instagram is there, Twitter, Facebook. I mean, like you said, once you just talk to people around once I try to be ready to learn and be ready to collaborate with other people, you don't need to know everything. I mean, if you just know one or two of them, you'll be able to move around and then the rest will come easy. I saw in the chat somebody said they use Monday.com, I know it, I know Notion. I was trying to use Notion two weeks ago and I felt like, oh, this is just a good tool, but I have other tools that I'm using and like, okay, I'm not ready to learn a new one. But if there need be, then I have to go ahead and do that. And yes, so in terms of this, let me call our last speaker and to give us his views about that. Manuel, the ball is in your court. I know you speak English, but for the purpose of people that doesn't really speak English good, since we have the translation, you could take my question, you know, in English, and I love the way you speak Spanish before. So if you want to do that again, I mix a little bit of English in there, like you did, please. So you, the ball is in your court now. Thank you. Thank you, Kazim, and embracing diversity. I will answer this one in Spanish as well. And then for the part, we can do English. So with respect to the question of how diaspora can adapt to this so accelerated evolution, because it has been a very accelerated evolution, obviously I don't want to put diasporas in the same canasta and different cultural contexts, the countries where these diasporas arrive, the reasons for which they arrive, the countries where they come from, I already mentioned it too, Jasmine, the digital breach, I can share from my experience what I've seen and what I've done, what I've done. I think that a very interesting part is this exchange of knowledge, of experiences with the members of the diaspora itself. Again, the example of the Mexican global network seems very interesting to me, these established networks, because it becomes easier to attract talent or attract people who have this kind of knowledge to share it with the rest of the network. How does the global network, the chapter of which I am part of in the low countries through workshops, through webinars, but also in a very interesting way, have created alliances with organizations in the case of the network that I am part of in the low countries that are interested in supporting the causes of these types of well-established organizations and that are willing to give their time to give this type of training or training, so it is to find these opportunities at a more organized diaspora level, so to speak, from the initiative of diaspora 20-30, specifically talking about this topic of communication and tools, for example we made a webinar with a Mexican who works for the United Nations Office for Refugees, who is an expert in artificial science and intelligence, and it was very interesting to know her experience and her contribution to the sustainable development, of course, but it was also very interesting how she introduced us to the topic and how she explained these elements that are now talked about so much by chat gpt and the fashion that she has generated, but hey, it was an interesting way to introduce us to this type of topics and conversations and finally, and a little what Whitney said, also how the diasporas can use social media, social networks, the platforms that already exist to connect with the members of their own community and keep the connection with the members and with their own country, so that would be my contribution in that sense, Kasim. Thank you so much, Manuel, I enjoyed that. I mean, you mentioned that there was a webinar that you did with a data scientist from the United Nations, and then you did these seminars and webinars with your people from the organization. I think this is a very good one, it's very important. I want to state here also that any other organization could use this particular idea that Manuel mentioned here, and the GDC will be in a good position to help you find the best person to give these webinars or seminars or workshop to your people. I had an experience during the corona time, I am the chairman of the Nigerian communities here, there are about 18,000 Nigerians in the Barberia, and during the corona, they were used to meeting every month somewhere, and they were like, yeah, there's no way we can do meeting, and there are a lot of older people there, I mean people that are in this country, something like 60s, even, and they were like, oh no, we can't do anything, let's forget about it, I insisted, I said, look, there's Zoom there, we can meet on Zoom, we can do many things on Zoom, and they got used to it. Now we can do hybrid meetings with them, we can go somewhere meet and we can do hybrid, and it's really really good, I mean, some of them we need to, we have to train them, we have to send someone to them to show them how to do it, and this is what exactly Manuel tells us, I mean try and bring the people along with you in these new technologies, and that's the only way they can feel comfortable, and also maybe come along, I mean the young ones are actually like they were born with it, so it's quite easy. Yeah, I want to hand over the next part to Maria, Maria, please continue. Thank you, Kazim, thank you very much, it's very nice to see how the discussions develop in a way that we can easily transition to the next question. This question is one of my favorite ones, because sometimes it's seen more as a challenge as than an opportunity, and the question is which tools are the most effective to communicate across generations. So depending on when you were born, and also sometimes where you were born, your digital abilities are different, and this might be seen as a challenge for a diaspora organizations, and I want to start this time with Manuel, so maybe Manuel we can continue in Spanish. Manuel, can you talk a little about the tools that you see as the most effective to communicate between generations, if you can mention some of them, what have been your experiences within the organization you represent? Thank you very much, Maria Dolores, and I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on this topic because the truth is that I'm not, I want to add a very interesting point, just connected to the previous question, I'm seeing in the chat and how knowledge is being shared, not only from those who are on the side of the panelists, but also from those who are on the side of the audience, and that's the power of this kind of tools. Going back to this point, and well, you already said it, it doesn't depend on the generational issue, but also on the whole context, in Mexico I would dare to generalize, and if there are people, I know there are people from Latin America, and I'm falling into a, assuming something incorrectly, please let me know, but at least in Mexico, the use, for example, of WhatsApp is very interesting, they make groups for everything, from the wedding of the aunt and organize the family meeting, even collaborations, events, really the use has extended a lot, an interesting case is, we have a group of around 30 Mexicans who live outside of our borders and who are interested in us and we dedicate ourselves in different ways to the subject of sustainability, and we have created a sustainability cluster and we keep constant communication through WhatsApp to share, and I have invited some and I see that around here there are at least a couple of them, I'm very happy to communicate this kind of events, opportunities, potential collaborations, obviously we have finished meetings, we use other digital tools, but WhatsApp has a quite widespread use in Mexico, I dare to say in Latin America, something that I would like to mention by connecting it with this, is that beyond thinking about the most effective tools of the generation, we have to think about what we want to communicate, what we want to achieve through the message, and then think about what is the strategy and what are the tools or the most suitable tools, so we could already consider Facebook for certain generations, LinkedIn, or finally, as I said to a cousin in his 20 years, 29 years old, when I went to Mexico, he said, today I am doing these webinars, I would like to know what reasons they make you join a webinar, and he told me, you are crazy, I do not add any webinar unless you force me, if you want to get the message to my generation, you have to use TikTok, then it becomes very important to also understand what we want to achieve and identify which are the channels that use our generations and generate a strategy to be able to reach them through the adequate channels. Thank you very much Manuel, you have brought a very interesting point, I can only agree with you in that what's up is the channel for many Latin American people, regardless of origin, age, almost everyone is able to use it, and that's one of the reasons why it's so spread, I can also say that in some countries where access to electricity and internet, this platform is also very useful because it's very easy to have when you have a low internet speed, etc., and you have the opportunity to write and speak, so I think for some of the older generations this is a plus, and it's also I think one of the platforms that allows the exchange between generations, because then I would like to ask Whitney to you, how do you see it? One thing that I find it interesting is that we know that there are different platforms that are more attractive to the different generations, but when it comes to communicating between those generations, to generate exchange across generations, what do you think are the best platforms? Do you have any experiences with that, even though you are a youth organization, and as I said before most of your members probably are very young or digital native, can you tell us a little bit about your experiences? Thank you again, Maria. This again is a very interesting question, and yes, which tools are most effective to communicate across generations? First we need to think about the age group, and the kind of community you're trying to communicate with, so from there you can now pick the most effective tool for that community. I am personally going to speak for my organization and the people we cater to who are the youth, so between 18 to 45. Sometimes some people think they are 18 to 45, but I am 60 for example, and I still want to belong to this year because we know some people may look or at old, but then they are still youths in their mind, so for my organization we mostly use WhatsApp and Instagram, because as some people know the Nigerian youth in the Netherlands started as a political organization, we used the WhatsApp platform, and of course Facebook, yes. If I remember vividly Facebook was the first because Facebook is mostly accessible to all. You can even find a 70-year-old person on Facebook because it's easy to use, it's much more understandable, you can switch between languages to your preference, so we started as a political organization and then we blow something into a registered organization for the youth what we are right now, so I remember when we first started we first needed to go on Facebook to look for the Nigerians there, even not minding what age you are, we just wanted to get more people to support our Nigerians back home, and then from Facebook we moved to WhatsApp, so with WhatsApp it's really very very easy to communicate with our audience because we use it as a ground for easy communication and integration as well. When you ask questions concerning housing, concerning school, concerning payments, just anything at all, and if I thought you're just coming from Nigeria to the Netherlands to either study during your family or work, whatever question you put it in the WhatsApp group, people see it immediately and they're able to respond immediately if they have the right answer, and if they don't they refer you to another person, so with WhatsApp it's very easy to communicate with, and then again we use Instagram. Instagram is like on a larger I would say it's like a primary social media platform or digital tool, I would call it a secondary, if you would allow me, I would say Facebook and WhatsApp are probably in the primary, but Instagram is like on the secondary level, so with Instagram we also use it to communicate to our audience, but what I find most interesting about it is like Instagram is another form of an archive or a portfolio, so I think Instagram is a digital portfolio for the youth especially, so through Instagram all musicians are able to find us, ask us if we want to partner or collaborate, you know, or get to know what our musician stands for, how do you say that, stands for the ground of what it is, so yes the most effective tool for us is Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp, that's all I have to say, thank you. Thanks to you Whitney, that's something I know as well, I had the experience in the diaspora organization, I belong to, that we had the discussion about which platforms should we cover, so there are a lot of platforms I have seen in the chat that people are writing, which are the tools and platforms they are currently using and I would like to remind you as well that in the past sessions there has been also some discussion on this, so if you want you may view the recordings of those two sessions, if you're curious, they are available at the EI Diaspora website and so I kindly invite you, so if you're curious to check there, but yeah, Whitney you're right, so you're using different platforms, just Mina I would like to now to hear your opinions and also to ask you if in your experience you are trying to use as much platforms as available or if you are just picking the ones that bring you the most or you're even replacing because as Manuel was saying with the first question or the second question, sorry, with the fast development of digital tools, we observe that some platforms, some tools are replacing others, so is this something your experience in the organizations you are participating in? Thank you so much for this question, a lot has been already mentioned before, so the first thing is when it comes to social media, depending as you mentioned earlier Maria, depending on the audience that we want to target as well as the geographical locations, we need to be smart on that end, so when it comes to social media we use Instagram the most because I think also Whitney mentioned how it's a visual diary and I use it also a lot for advocacy campaigns, so for calls to action and usually it's millennials, Generation Z and so on so forth but then everything we share automatically to Facebook because this is where you're going to find older generations but also more people from global majority countries, more people from Africa, more people from Asia that are going to be using Facebook. Recently we just launched TikTok, so you know like there's a lot of debates around TikTok, surrounding TikTok, is it ethical, is it smart to be on there but we have to take the huge opportunity to have millions of people that are using TikTok and especially the younger generation which is also our main target audience because we're a youth led organization so we want to target this younger then internally within our organization, within politics for her, we tried so many different platforms, we tried Monday.com, we tried Notion, we tried Slack, it didn't work that well so I think the OG just like I was mentioned is WhatsApp. WhatsApp is the easiest way for us to communicate especially like from the diaspora because it's free and so on so forth but you know like since I've been in the US people text a lot here like using the text and I'm like that's not what we do that's not what we're used to we don't do that here we use WhatsApp because it's free it's accessible and everybody no matter where you are in the world even if you have an Android or iPhone doesn't matter you have access to WhatsApp so for us WhatsApp is the big OG we create different group chats sometimes it gets overwhelming but WhatsApp and then we reiterate important remember reminders through Gmail and then I also mentioned the last thing we use Zoom of course for our meetings but you know sometimes Zoom is not accessible to everybody because you have to pay for a subscription so we did get a fund for that but other than that there's this also a new platform that I shared on the chat that is called 2CAN that is revolutionizing the way that we connect on digital platforms networking platforms and that it's more like real life events so you can jump from a group to another so I invite you to check it out with partner with them and it's a really great platform. Thank you so much by hearing you and reading the chat I have the feeling that I am a very old person because I get I feel a little bit overwhelmed with the amount of different platforms applications etc that are out there and I can then understand people older than me when they say they are overwhelmed with all of these that but yeah coming again to to WhatsApp is very interesting to hear and get the confirmation from all of the speakers on how important this tool is especially because when you speak about social media and digital platforms most of the people tend to first think on things like Zoom, Instagram, social media, Facebook, even TikTok and WhatsApp I think falls more for people more in the realm it's the application I used to communicate with my family in my country of origin but at the end of the day we realize that we are using it for a more a lot of things that we need every day work voluntary work family etc so yeah thank you very much for your comments Kasim I will hand over to you for the next question thank you so much Maria I did follow the last one of the last question very well and the reaction from our speakers thanks so much for I mean there's a lot of enlightenment going on here I would say I mean highs are being open to many tools I'm actually trying to check these two can and then and I read in the in the in the chat session many informations are there I mean one of the very good ones that as an NGO if you have registration with TechSoup you can get a lot of tools for free or very cheap so check that one out and let's go to the fourth question today and that is how to use specific tools to enhance diaspora engagement for this one I want to go to Whitney to give us I mean because Whitney already mentioned specifically I mean like she said about Instagram we have Instagram we have Twitter we have WhatsApp Facebook I mean it's quite there are various types of most of these social media tools but each of them have their specific I mean use or better usage and stuff like that Yasmina said zoom zoom is actually that problem that you don't get all the effect of what you need inside of zoom even if you pay if you don't pay to set it among some effects are gone but if you are in TechSoup and you get uh teams for free there are many things you can do with teams you have Google maids you have I mean various type of this one can you and Whitney tell us shortly your organization how do you use this tool I mean to enhance diaspora engagement thank you Kazim yeah we use different digital tools for different reasons yeah for example our meetings of course you cannot use WhatsApp and start texting and everybody gets to you know say their points in the meeting so for the meetings we usually use Google maids and sometimes zoom and maybe teams but the most efficient one for us which is free and mostly accessible to our members would be Google maids so we always use Google maids for that so it's easier for everybody to get to talk just like we're doing right now so when it's not your turn to speak you can easily mute and then listen to the next person and like that and then for sharing our our events and updates and getting people to see what we're up to and what we'll be doing next we use Instagram and we use WhatsApp so our community so it our community is so big that not everyone belongs to or follows us on Instagram and not everyone likes to be in the WhatsApp group because you might wake up on morning and you find 1000 messages where are you going to start reading from so what we did was we had we have different um social media platforms for people's interest so if you don't want to be on the WhatsApp you can be on the telegram or you can be on the Instagram or Facebook or Twitter for example so we use this last mentioned social media for promoting and enhancing our updates and sharing events and getting people to know what the organization is about and then when it comes to a calls we do also direct our messaging we call or we send an email so that one is a bit more formal compared to WhatsApp and Instagram so these um social media platforms that I have mentioned that we use they allow us to connect with our with our diaspora members to participate in whatever we're doing regardless of their location and the distance of course so it's also very important to regularly evaluate the effectiveness because at the end of the day we also throw out a survey to see which platform people prefer connecting with us the most and which platform people prefer you know to to connect with the rest of the NYM during the Netherlands community the most so yeah these are our strategies that we also implement to make sure that we get to the right and the right and needed audience for the particular event or the particular information we're trying to put out there just to continually meet with the needs of our community thank you you thanks so much for with me that's a good one I mean you went specifically to tell us how you use these tools what you use them for which is good I'm sure it's useful for our listeners here one thing I mean we're still going to have a question and answer session so if you have any question just get them ready maybe put them down and if you want to put them on the chat window we'll be able to go through them or just maybe raise up your hand and then our moderators or the technical guys here will meet you and let you be able to talk so I want to throw the next question to Manuel. Manuel give us an idea I mean with over 60 projects I mean this is in Germany we say Van saying this is I don't know how to say it in English some words you know you don't find a way to say it mean it's just I mean awesome give us your idea on the tools you use maybe we can learn one or two things and how you use those tools to enhance that's right me thank you Kazim I will be glad to to share some some of these things um I will be doing this in Spanish as well um algo que que conecta con la pregunta anterior y con estos proyectos que estaban muy relacionados con innovación para el desarrollo sostenible es mantener una mente muy curiosa y experimentar y esto es muy importante por los avances tan acelerados que estamos atravesando un ejemplo tick creo que ciertas generaciones podemos tender a a descalificar o o o no validar que generaciones más jóvenes estén utilizando esta herramienta y perdemos la oportunidad de hacer preguntas y entender porque estas herramientas están conectando y atrayendo tanto estas audiencias experimentar es algo que me gusta hacer mucho y que intento cuando encuentro ya también me me eché un un ojo a tu can en en algún momento surgió en medio de la pandemia y todas estas plataformas digitales una que me parece muy interesante que se llama clubhouse y también por ahí fue una oportunidad de experimentar pero también de conectar con otras personas que después se puede pude atraer a al proyecto que estoy haciendo de días por a 20 30 entonces invitaría mucho tener esta mente curiosa a ser preguntas entender y experimentar otras cuestiones particulares que me gustaría compartir más enfocado al proyecto de días por a 20 30 he creado varios canas por supuesto linkedin youtube book twitter posts en medium y en este momento es importante evaluar en dónde están mis audiencias porque la pregunta que nos tenemos que hacer es porque quiero involucrar a la diáspora qué es lo que quiero lograr y a partir de eso bueno podemos definir las herramientas pero también estar midiendo el impacto de las diferentes herramientas y tomando decisiones informadas a partir del del lo que de lo que podamos medir de las herramientas yo me oriento mucho a linkedin porque la audiencia que que me a la que me interesa llegar que son profesionales del desarrollo sostenible sustentable sustentabilidad se encuentran ahí y el utilizo para poder generar otro tipo de de interacciones es muy importante mantener las interacciones constantes generar contenido o prestar la plataforma para que se genere contenido para traer a otras audiencias pero también es muy importante no limitar nuestra perspectiva a los canales las herramientas que nosotros tenemos para el caso de días por a 20 30 ha sido identificar cuáles son los potenciales aliados de comunicación que pudieran tener interés en apoyarnos hacer que este mensaje llegue a más personas y multiplicar entonces el alcance de lo que podemos hacer hay otras herramientas que no se han mencionado que pueden ser interesantes para iniciativas de la diáspora en su momento estábamos buscando generar más de estos webinars de días por a 20 30 afortunadamente conseguimos financiamiento del gobierno británico pero estaba explorando la posibilidad de plataformas de crowdfunding que también son herramientas muy interesantes plataformas como patreon que permiten también generar ingresos para los creadores de contenido es es en fin hay un sin número de plataformas que vale la pena explorar de nuevo dependiendo siempre de qué es lo que quiero lograr y finalmente agregar y haciendo esta la última pregunta aunque entiendo que vamos a ir al debate no no limitar el pensamiento a únicamente la plataforma no la plataforma está dentro de un contexto y la utilizan las personas los seres humanos entonces es muy importante ver todo dentro de este gran contexto y no limitar únicamente a la plataforma o el canal de comunicación muchas gracias casino thank you so much manuel yeah um that's a good one here one thing i picked that is very important is the crowdfunding thing i mean we've been talking about all these tools but we've never really go into crowdfunding even though yasmin i think in the beginning mentioned about talking about the funding of the team i mean i will really be more interested if maybe someone among our speaker no maybe some better crowdfunding platform maybe shortly how you can use it to to get funding or i mean how we can use these tools also to help your organization organization achieve whatever you want to achieve the question is down there yasmin i want to go to to you now to give us what you think about how to use i mean these tools you know specific so what do you use them for do you have a cloud funding platform you experience with you used i mean you can also go into the other ones how you use them but maybe you can elaborate more on this one thank you yes of course thank you for this question so when it comes to crowdfunding we i once only once use it to go find me and it was for a specific project but what we is that we apply to specific grants for for funding opportunities so i i haven't been using that much crowdfunding platforms but what we do also is that we use online petitions like change.org and we use social media as a way to engage to mobilize the diaspora in morocco so whenever there's an issue related to women's rights for example we're going to co-organize with other organizations uh whether in the diaspora or on the ground a protest uh so this is how we we're going to mobilize people through social media telling them we're going to be protesting this day at this time in front of the the parliament and then here's a petition that you can sign so we do a lot of digital advocacy and activism through social media platforms so it's been great to mobilize it's been extremely successful also to put pressure on policymakers and legislators you don't have to be present in morocco in order to exist or exert this kind of pressure and also in order to bring this real life change because our mobilization online and a lot of us are in the diaspora because of also some safety reasons right like we have more freedom when we are brought to speak freely and you know um so that's also a good part of it then um i think that Manuel mentioned LinkedIn i love LinkedIn it's my favorite social media platform because i really use it as a way to share professional wisdom and experiences since i'm abroad and i've been learning a lot and accumulating different experiences it's also a way to inspire the diaspora and the younger generation or or whatsoever and i use it like as a more like professional tips and advice kind of a platform in order to empower them i do also women empowerment coaching so that's that's something that's i've i've i've been doing also digital through meeting through like zoom platforms doing our conferences online too that's another way that we've been using to boost engagement and to communicate and engage with our communities i think one thing that is important to take into consideration whenever we have those online meetings is the being mindful of the different time zones which can be a hassle it can be really like a struggle but we always figure it out and even within our team right now like within politics for her we have over 100 members all over the world and even just within the global hub i think we have six different time zones but we always make it work we'll figure it out but we have to be mindful of these things and then also in terms of language interpretation and inclusiveness that's also something to take into consideration and you know like when it comes to morocco it's quite complex because we speak arabic but we speak a different kind of arabic we speak derijal the dialect and then now not many moroccos don't want to speak french anymore so they're switching to english so we have this like also being mindful of the different languages that we use and the way we communicate but for now english is the main one but i'm really interested to to hear more about the different crowdfunding platforms since i do not have enough expertise or experience on that but thank you for the question thanks so much so much yasmina i mean oscar posted something about the crowdfunding platform that i asked for a page please go there and and check it and what i picked most mostly from your comments is the link in part of it i mean naturally myself i always think linkedin is for professionals just putting down their their resume and looking for work and stuff like that i mean linkedin has gone past that and i mean you just need to look at all what is happening there i mean it's actually a social media platform and i've seen all other network of mine that are using linkedin in a very nice way so thanks thanks for that um we are moving on to the next stage and that is the question and answer i will now hand over to maria to uh anchor that and there are a lot of questions in the in the chat we'll go through those those questions also so maria uh over to you thank you very much kaseem yes you are all invited to write your questions in the chat we will try to answer them as possible we have plenty of time so i'm very happy that we can discuss some of the topics more in depth and the the first question that i would like to ask you and maybe i will go one by one but one of the first questions was not only on the platforms your you and your organizations are using to communicate but the kind of content uh that you're putting there so manuel uh briefly mentioned in one of his uh uh comments that more important than the platform per se is what you want to communicate so maybe manuel you can start and let us know um yeah for for which kind of content you are using uh which kind of platforms are you sharing videos are you organizing webinars are are you using a blog um yeah so i would be glad to hear your experiences thank you maria and i will allow me to experiment i'm gonna try to show no i cannot share the screen so the experiment didn't work this time uh but i want to share in the chat the channel of diaspora 2030 because what we do is that we don't only in the time of covid everybody was running webinars like crazy and for us like okay much more than running another webinar of course the purpose is to highlight what mexicans from the diaspora have been doing to contribute to sustainable development but how do we make sure that we can spread this message and get to more people to the right people so it's like yes having these webinars we run them through the zoom platform and between 50 to 100 people have joined each of the webinars um then of course the recorded webinar is uh uploaded into youtube we have this youtube channel i will be sharing in a bit i write a medium post i've been using medium um to synthesize what we've discussed in the webinar but what i like about medium is that you can bring together the recording some images from the from the webinar but most importantly what we've created around the the round table the virtual round tables i'm calling these webinars virtual round tables or conversatorios is the visual recording so the visual recording is real time uh scripting so there's a professional person doing a scripting of everything that's being shared through the round table so it's documenting all of this shared knowledge that we're creating in real time so it's a way for us to connect the dots while we're having these conversations but also this is a good way to disseminate the message after each of our round tables so that's also something that we're using to make sure that we get the message across again as i mentioned i'm using LinkedIn a lot but something very very important is to keep people engaged and make sure that you're growing actively your network i've seen many initiatives and and the thinking is like yeah i should have like all the channels i'm gonna create my instagram my twitter my facebook and then they start like disseminating the message they're two followers so it's how do you identify the most relevant channel for your digital tool but also which strategies are you going to be using to engage with the right audience generate these critical massive people that you want to get your message to and then you start dissemination and disseminate and spreading the message i was sure that the channel the youtube channel in the media via via the chat thank you manuel for your comments that's something i am very curious to know with me from your experiences do you because you mentioned that you use different platforms different channels um for your generation do you think the amount of content that you are generating is important it's relevant so the more content you generate and post the more followers you get the more engagement you get from the people or do you see on the contrary a need for more quality than amount of posts from your generation perspective thank you maria um i mean a lot of us know about the saying that goes thus um quality over quantity so with social media and the the the kind of audience that we cater for we don't go for quantity because as youths we get really tired at some point if we continue to see different posts every day talking about different things so we try to narrow down the number of posts we put out a day or a week depending on how how busy the organization is on that particular week or month so we don't post like five times a day for example or we all we don't post too much and we don't post too little like i said earlier it depends it depends on what we are doing for that month or that week so yes i think that our audience um they they they crave for quality over quantity to answer the question very shortly and briefly thank you thank you and yes mina continuing continuing in this um um conversation i would like to know from you because you are working from two different perspectives you're working with young people but you are also a gender specialist do you see a difference between the kind of content that need to be generated for men and women depending on their cultural background on the cultural context of course for children you need to generate adapted content to them so can you comment on on those two things and let us let us know your experience yeah absolutely so i think just like what Whitney mentioned an overflow of information and it could be really um heavy for one's mental health you know spending so much time on social media scrolling down but there's also issues of misinformation and disinformation that has also affected our communities back home i remember during the COVID-19 pandemic you know the messages will be forwarded on what's up so many times for example that they had to add that that's mentioned that it was forwarded multiple times and there would be a lot of propaganda and i would have to have discussions with my family members and tell them no this is actually not a reliable source and so on so forth when it comes to the different kind of audience and targeted audience i think that's we've seen like in the past here something really scary happening with personalities like Andrew Tate that promotes gender-based violence openly online and that speak to this younger audience without being censored so there's been a lot of also online gender-based violence in Morocco for example we had issues of non-consensual shared images and in order to answer to this opposition it's it's important to be there it's important to put content out there that is going to demystify these stereotypes these harmful gender stereotypes and gender norms and remind the audience of what's important what's not what's right from what's wrong and when it comes to gender issues right i think also that it's when it comes to platforms like tiktok a lot of young younger people in their teenage years they're very easily influenced it's easy to influence them right because like the brain is not developed until 25 and you can still have these new ideas put into your mind so it's important like to be out there but at the same time to make sure to take care of yourself because as a digital activist i've received so much hate especially from people back home just because i'm speaking up for women's rights and that's why also there's the security aspect i know that it was mentioned in the group chat a lot so many people tried to hack my accounts that's why it's important to always put a two factor uh authentication always put that and the second thing is like platforms like whatsapp they can be they're not as safe so signal or telegram can be better so i think uh before like advocating for the rest of the world you also need to advocate for yourself and make sure that you keep yourself safe you keep yourself sane because there is a lot of terrible content out there and it's really hard to differentiate between what's reliable from what's not so we try to also remind the audience about that and to go against the opposition of course thank you jesemina that's in fact something that touches me as well i live in in spain and it's hard to believe but a study in spain has shown that more than 25 percent of young males so men under the age of 25 do not believe there is gender violence they think they believe that gender violence is something that media has invented and this is very worrying and i completely understand your concerns and also because as you say many of us uh come from countries where not um not all humans right are respected are granted so we have to take care of ourselves i uh personally made the experience in one exchange uh within the uh venezuela and diaspora i am venezuela and now venezuelans are spread all over the world and we had a Zoom meeting with the venezuela and diaspora and at some moment uh we realized there were uh some people there you know just wanting to get information the names on all the people attending the meeting to then be you know put under pressure just because they were speaking up about the uh problems uh that are happening there so this is something i i share with you and yeah where i see we diaspora organizations should take the opportunity to engage more in learning not only how to use these tools to better communicate between us but also to increase our um yeah security and make sure that we are not put in danger ourselves and not um and either our yeah family members community so thank you for for that sharing it was very important i also read in the in the chat a question coming back to the platforms and the kind of contents uh uh we are sharing on them with them if you're still using websites do you think and this is something that uh where i would like to have uh an answer from from the three of of you are you still using a website do you think a website is still necessary for a diaspora organization that was the question in the chat so maybe uh Whitney we start with you hi again um yes for the Nigerian youths in the Netherlands we do have a website but we are not very active on there like we are on instagram and whatsapp and the other social media platforms and that's because on the website we mostly share um um larger um content like a larger video or a lot of pictures and then we give like in-depth information about what the organization is for and how you can contact us so we really do not use the website so much but well for people who organizations who want to get to know more about the Nigerian youths in the Netherlands they could you know search us through the website and i believe um having a website is also very important because um some organizations might not or they might like shy away from working or collaborating with you as an organization or as a business if they try to put in your name on the internet and it's just giving them a facebook instagram or telegram um um invite um link and then there is no website you know so i feel like a website is very very important to just you know um introduce that um formal in seriousness about what you're doing as an organization or an entrepreneur great thanks Whitney yeah i can also say that um i lived for 15 years in Germany and um the organization i belong to is in Germany it's a Venezuelan diaspora organization in Germany and um in Germany having a website is not compulsory but is one of the ways where you can show you can demonstrate that you are a serious organization because normally you have the disclaimer you have to put the information of on about the organization you represent and that's the easiest way for people to check that you are for instance a registered organization and when it comes to exchanging with official agencies with governments etc so that's uh let's say the visit card is the easiest way to say okay here we are this is the work we do and not only showing a facebook or instagram account so um just Mina how is it with you do you have a website um and which kind of content you share with that is like a very uh simple one where you don't change the content that much or how often you do it actually we do have a website because for us the website is really important i started politics for her as a blog so first i was just sharing some of my personal essays from my academic journey and then i invited more collaborators and instagram was used as a way to amplify so we didn't have like at first i didn't have original content for politics for her on instagram it was just i posted an article on this but now we have original content for instagram of course and then we amplify our blog entries so we do articles opeds our academic articles blog entries on our websites and then we're just going to share like a very quick summary on social media platforms to invite people to check it out on on our website we also do policy briefs and the policy briefs are 10s 15 sometimes 20 pages so of course this is not something that we can post on social media platforms so we use that for our website as well and i think it's also like a great way to show the different work that you do because we also have different global hubs we have different regional hubs sorry so we have different languages so you know like not everything is just on one instagram page we have different instagram pages for each of our regional hubs so the website is a great way to explain the work that we do in terms of our different hubs and the way that we work what we stand for our values as well as the different programs that we implement and the different content that we put out there some of the content is just for the website so we have like women warriors profile book reviews movie reviews that we do amplify at times on the social media pages but for us our website is really important because it's a way a platform to also amplify the voices of young women from the global south that wants to write on a topic that they're passionate about and if you're interested i invite you to check out politicsforher.com great thank you so much if you could share the the direction there in the chat that would be great just Mina Manuel what about you how are you using websites are you using them i think that's that's the question if i'm using a website no we don't have one but just a quick parenthesis at least announcing that i was trying this experiment worked and i might be able to share part of the content that we do and well i answered this question so let me just try here and you see my screen now is woman victoria marques mess okay perfectly fine i'm just going to play this this is the kind of content that we create in the virtual round table so this is the visual recording that's done live so what we usually do is that we upload their youtube record their recording to the youtube channel and this visual recording we upload into instagram or other other social networks we currently don't have a website and that's something that we're working on and we stop sharing uh huh that's something we're currently working on and i think uh already uh with me and just Mina and yourself mentioned why is this important because and but again it everything comes back to the question why do i want to have a website why do i want to achieve in the case of diaspora 2030 and just by communicating through LinkedIn mostly and people started realizing and of course like making sure that whoever registered to our webinars that we could keep the contacts and that we can send them updates that we could invite them to our different channels uh generated some traction so there have already has been already some interest from people from other diasporas in the world like friends and there's one person in Peru who's interested in replicating this for the proving diaspora and at this point for the project it's very important to have a website because if you want to go to potential partners bonders strategic and alliances then you need to be able to show what you're doing and the first thing that many of them will be looking at is your website also if you're applying for any kind of grant and or partnership people will be asking okay can you share your website with us so yeah this is something we're working on we don't have a website currently thank you Manuel thank you yeah I would like because today is our last session and we still have time so if you have any questions and you want to ask them directly please feel free to raise your hands to unmute yourself and ask any question and in the meanwhile I would like to to ask Larissa because she could uh she can explain to us uh a little bit more on the use of I diaspora Larissa the floor is yours thank you Maria it has been such a great pleasure to learn from you to be honest it's one of my favorite things it's really opening this discussion and see how generations learn and share the experiences it has been really really a great experience and of course also listen to different languages I think it's it's really great um so just very briefly I'm also a member of the Mexican diaspora and I think it's really very incredible to see all the efforts that have been done not only between nationalities but also the global level so here I will be representing IOM besides my passion for for my country and all the great work that it has been already shared but today I diaspora is really trying to become that hub that connects diasporas at the global level and we have been able to do it thanks to all the great partnerships that we have all the engagement of our community and I think one of the key things that I would like to mention is the difference between a website a hub a platform we we have already reached upon the different types of social networks that exist the use of LinkedIn the use of TikTok but obviously also there is a difference between a website that is much more static and then a hub and a platform that is supposed to be much more engaging to share content and allow everyone to share their own experiences as practices resources and this is exactly the rationale behind I diaspora we're giving the floor to everyone to create their own content share what works for them through blogs posts everything and we also try to always engage with with new collaborators through new initiatives for instance last year we did the photo competition the youth interviews so we we really try to to engage with different audiences and just to learn from you and it hasn't really great to see the the level of participation lately we just launched a new call for social protection it's a new number that we're going to publish with Rooted Magazine so if you want to share your experiences I know Kazim has done it in the previous numbers so thank you for that Kazim please feel free to do so and happy to answer to to any any questions and thank you again for the great moderation and participation thank you so much Larissa for your comments and also for explaining us a little bit the difference between yeah website platform hub it's not for everyone easy to understand especially for those belonging belonging to the older generations thank you so much Kazim I have I've seen you have raised your hand is that correct you won I was actually pumping up for Larissa yeah great thank you are there any other questions I mean feel free to participate to raise your hand ask your question or and also share your experiences within your own diaspora organizations I don't know if there is anyone willing to share in the meanwhile I would like to ask a further question and it is related to the digital learning as we have been speaking about differences in the digital abilities from different generations I made the experience that a friend of mine shared with me the picture of her mother taking a course to better to learn how to better use her smartphone and it was quite interesting because in the picture there were about 20 ladies over 60 65 year olds and no man no male so the only man man in the in the picture was the instructor of of that course and maybe just Mina as your agenda specialist but I would also like to also hear the opinions from or the experiences from Manuela and Whitney just Mina we can start with you what are the challenges that you have faced when yeah great trying to communicate within your diaspora between yeah informing women and men especially common from different cultural background slavic countries so maybe you can share with us your experiences in this regard yeah thank you so much for asking this question um to be very serious it's been really hard I've thought of stopping so many times because the amount of hate that I get whether from men or women because there's also a lot of internalized misogyny it's crazy but I've taken precautions so the first thing is that only people who follow me can comment on my posts on Twitter and Instagram for example only people that I follow can send me messages or reply to my stories so things like that right so I've taken the precautions and every time like I just someone attacks me I just block them right away but it's extremely challenging and if you're especially if you're not someone that is used to it but I've been doing this for the past seven years almost now so it's kind of like numb and ironical to say that I became so used to receiving online gender-based violence and hateful comments sometimes even racist slurs because I'm more tend than the average beauty standards european western centric standards that moroccan's have so I even was called the n-word multiple time and uh to be honest like you just have to shift the focus on who do I want to focus on I want to focus on people that are open-minded and that wants to bring positive change I am not going to focus on those that are so close-minded that call you terrible things and that there's no room for debates I don't have an energy for debating I don't have time for that so I just block and move on with my life and keep on doing the impact that I'm doing at my own level whether big or medium or large or small it doesn't matter as long as I'm contributing to making a difference but it's really challenging and also social media platforms big tech companies do not protect activist women's defenders enough I cannot stress that enough how many times I had to report accounts and they were not sick it down when they there's also this barrier of like language because it's usually in english that they're going to understand if there's a racist slur but what if it's in moroccan arabic they're not going to understand that so how can we make sure that we're safe we should be safe in the digital space as much as we are in the digits in the streets outside right but so there's a lot of issues that are affecting women in particular so women of color when they see a young woman especially young women of color speaking up and speaking out against injustices or denouncing it threatens them it threatens them because the way that they perceive that is that it's a threat it's a western threat feminism is a western threat you're here to get rid of our values of islam of you know of all of our traditions just because I stand for women that face discrimination or gender diverse people sgbtqa plus community it's not even a discussion that we could have without getting attacked by people so I think that there are a lot of challenges and for that tech companies must do better yeah and this is something where we diaspora organizations could network for as an example so I don't know if this is something that you have reflected only on your own so the measures you have taken you do it on an individual level or if you share those concerns and those situations within your diaspora organization maybe Whitney what have been your experiences regarding yeah gender divide or if you have been yeah you have experienced similar situations when it comes to posting in the digital world if there has been any personal attack well it's quite dicey with me I haven't experienced as much as Yasmina and I'm very sorry on behalf of these people who do these things and don't even realize how bad and how far they're going with the comments but I haven't personally experienced any hate on my personal Instagram or whatnot but on the organization Instagram I think there's been just one event where we were talking about how the Europeans can help migrants and refugees you know build a better life here in Europe or anywhere else instead of sending thousands of boats to the Mediterranean to send them back from wherever they're coming from and I remember someone commented no they use these burner accounts they don't have a face they use very strange and weird names so you don't know who exactly that comment is coming from so the the the person I don't know if it's a he or a ha the person came under the post and they commented send them back home and things like that so the only way to just deal with it is to either delete the comment and report the account but then I think reporting the account will not stop these people because they can still create another fake account and come back to troll you so how many accounts can you delete in a day or how many people can you report in a day or how many people can you block in a day so I think the best advice I would give is to build a tough skin and when you see comments like that I don't know if there is like a feature or an option to high comments like this so you don't even get to see them I think Instagram does have it you can put in keywords of things you don't want to see on your Instagram so when somebody comes and they comment with the keywords you have put in on your Instagram Instagram doesn't show it to you so I think that is one way to avoid letting comments like these get into get to you so yeah I haven't really experienced their personal hate flaws or one of these things that Yasmin explained but then for the for the organization yes one time somebody came and they weren't very nice with their comments so that what we did was just delete the account and block the person yeah thank you Whitney yeah it's true I mean when we share content in the digital space we also are exposed to getting yeah this kind of reply of hate and so this is something where the diaspora organizations need to work as well to learn how to keep a certain digital hygiene if I if I can call it like that so that we can keep our mental health and not let us stop or feel bad with these kind of things before getting back to you Manuel I would like to to ask I I will try to pronounce it correctly Monina or I don't know if you are if I am pronouncing it correctly are you there you wanted to to share something with us uh I don't know Monina sorry if I I cannot pronounce it thank you Patty I think she's there but uh Mike is uh Mike is on but no video well I think she's there she's not even muted so maybe she's not on the desk or something well in the in the meantime I would like to ask Manuel because Mexico is a very diverse country and when it comes to to digital tools of course we have not only the challenge of working with different generations but also with people of different backgrounds and in Mexico where there are so many different indigenous communities speaking different languages and your work on sustainability somehow relates to the people inhabiting natural spaces um have you experienced uh the challenge and how to communicate uh with these communities is the our digital tools also uh something you can use to improve the um participation of of these communities for instance in in your sustainability work that's a question that I asked myself a lot in terms of when creating diaspora 2030 the intention of or the purpose of highlighting the contributions that Mexicans of the diaspora have to sustainable development was putting the these people under the spotlight for them to share these different perspectives learnings experiences one of the things I have been trying to avoid with this platform is to send the wrong message that because this person is living maybe in Europe the US Japan somewhere in Asia yes they are the experts they are the the knowledgeable people and we should be listening to them no these people have a different perspective simply because they have been through different life experiences but the aim of the round tables the virtual round tables of diaspora 2030 it's really to build this collective knowledge there have been some very interesting um learnings and people working on sustainable development on European based organizations sharing their own perspective of how they work with local communities for instance and you might find that there are so much disparities or so much different understandings of life but that's right because I think that we have to create these spaces where we can have these conversations but challenge for me is how do we get this content or how do how do we integrate people from usually excluded communities into the conversation and that's a challenge because of many things it's it's access to technology but it's also many other different systemic barriers that we have created um so for me it's how do we turn this if we if I already have an existing platform how do I make sure that this platform can be used for that purpose I just want to share one example which is connected to one of the questions here somebody was asking about the telephone and the use of the telephone because yes at the very beginning the digital divide was mentioned there is this organization which is called a teach for all which has different like roots in different countries and there's one initiative in Mexico called teach for Mexico so they send these young people who have just finished their bachelor's degree college they send them to marginalized impoverished communities to become teachers and one of the experiences that that this person was sharing with me is that the access to a good internet connection it's a challenge it's not possible for them they have to pay for for you know like they have to pay for to have data in their mobile phones so the solution that this person came to is like okay I'm going to run the session via Zoom but I'm also going to share via WhatsApp these lights to the students who might not have a good connection so that they already have them and then she called them over the phone and then she was going through these lights and the students already had these lights there and and I really think that this this ability to to find how do you sort out these these challenges and barriers is very very important when we think about this topic of digital tools and resources because there are many people who don't have access to these digital tools and resources and as everything is moving ahead so rapidly what's happening is that the gap is just growing between those who have access and those who don't so I think that we should keep always that in mind thank you so much yeah I have a the feeling Manuel that also in this direction with the with chat chat GPT now this divide will only increase because you will not only have the people that are that have digital abilities that can use different digital tools but then you will also have with things like chat GPT a further divide between the people that will know how to get the best possible out of those tools and people that can use those tools but not knowing how to get the best out of it will only increase misinformation, express of fake news, using the tool just for you know trying to pass an exam to write a work for school for university but without without knowing how to do it then they they have a great chance of failing it at it and so this will further I think further increase this divide I would I would be curious to know and maybe that's something that the audience can share with us via the chat for instance who has used chat GPT already and who hasn't so is this something that we could use for a diaspora work because we have been speaking of digital tools for communication within our diaspora communities for exchanging between organizations bringing information to to a broader public but can we use and maybe Manuel because I read you work on sustainability and for an organization that is using it's reporting on standards of sustainability can we use digital tools also in our work beyond communication we have spoken briefly about crowdfunding for instance but are there any other scenes that we can reach with by using digital tools so if you want to share your thoughts the audience please feel free as well to participate we are reaching the end of of the session we have a few more minutes and yeah Manuel how are you using digital tools for for these standards for sustainability in your projects yes we're using more and more a artificial intelligence for for instance going through sustainability reports a lot of big data working with with data managing all of this information yes the world is going more and more and more in that direction for the initiative of diaspora 2030 and as as I mentioned there has already been some interest to replicate these virtual roundtables in other countries so I started a task of writing a manual or a handbook to easy to replicate this and of course chat GPT did the the proof reading of all the text to make sure that it can be communicated to a white audience of diasporas from all around the globe and I agree with what you're saying about the use of these tools and who has access and who does not have access who are the owners also of these tools how are these tools fed because at the end of the day artificial intelligence is fed with information that's already existing but this information might and has some biases and this has implications when you're using the tools so yeah I cannot even imagine as I like to think about the example of when when the car with the automobile was invented or when Henry Ford revolutionized the industry by creating the cars much more rapidly people were not even able to imagine the implication that these would be having because they're living in a very very different world I think it's the same with AI and connected to the topic of these of digital tools again my invite to everyone would be don't think about the tools in isolation it's not about the tools it's about the context in which the tools are embedded is who are using the tools who are the owners of the tools how are we using the tools what the purpose of using the tools who have access who do not have access it's really really thinking about the broad picture and making decisions great thank you very much for your insights on on that I agree with you I think it has been a very interesting discussion we are reaching the end of the QA session thank you very much everyone for for your comments your questions your contributions it has been a very exciting discussion I invite you again all of you to be to take part on the survey that will be available after the session we are yeah expecting to hear your feedback on on these big virtual exchanges also remember that you will be able to find the recordings of each of the sessions at the iDiaspora website and on the page of the event and now I would like to hand over to Professor Binod Kadriya for the closing remarks Professor the floor is yours thank you thank you Maria I may not be visible because there is some glitch on the video perhaps but I think the session has been very very engaging and this particularly we have come a long way long long way in terms of the discussion that we had on communication technologies particularly starting with skills strategies and now this particular session has been devoted to innovative tools and we had a very very rich discussion starting with the two very knowledgeable moderators I should say Kazim and Maria raising very very pertinent questions and of course the three speakers that we had here have contributed a great deal in terms of the inputs that are required Whitney, Yasmina and Manuel so I would like to think in terms of making closing remarks I think it is not possible to summarize the discussion because it has been so diverse and at the same time all encompassing so I would tend to think that at some point in time perhaps we need to create a world cloud in terms of what has been flagged during the discussion starting with the particular platforms the tools themselves the techniques and so on but ultimately coming to the broad questions in terms of the relevance and the risks that are involved in dealing with them here I'm I'm just reminded because I perhaps belong to a generation which is the baby boomers one and but I can also see that we do have the later generations of participants in this particular session we do have baby boomers two and then of course many all of course do not look like they belong to that generation they look much younger than their own generation but we do have X and Y and Z and alpha and so on so I think it is extremely important to address what has been already done in terms of what is relevant and how to bridge the generation divide digital divide of course but generation divide and that's where I think the points that have been mentioned under this organization is very very important because what is unique to my mind to the innovative tools in terms of digital technology is the real time that the real time participation is is the crux of the digital tools because if we go back in history then we realize how the communications was done and I was thinking of the post office the postcard that used to take so many days to cross the distance and today we find that in fact that word telegram has been used so many times and the new technology is given that terminology I was thinking of Morse the language Morse that was given for communication through telegraphic transfers and then we come across the email was invented by Sabir Bhatia was also a part of the diaspora he was in the Silicon Valley and Manuel mentioned about Sam Pitroda and that was the time when Rajiv Gandhi the Prime Minister of India wanted to make this paradigm shift from traditional technologies to digital technologies and he actually put Sam Pitroda as the as the head of not only one mission the technology mission but other five missions also and that we're dealing with water with other kinds of seeds and things like that so I think the broader questions that we're dealing we were addressing towards the end of the sessions were actually encompassed in those efforts that have been made and what is significant is that these initiatives in developing innovative tools telecommunications particularly as had come from global south that I think is is the hallmark and why that is so that is because the diaspora actually belongs to the global south the origin countries are in the global south although the diaspora is located in the global north countries but today in this session we have realized that we do have diaspora in the global south also as destination countries in Africa in Asia in Latin America and so on that I think is a message that we need to carry forward through these initiative these virtual exchanges that are that have been initiated by this collaborative work between iDiaspora, IOM, CSUN, ADAPT, GDC and of course my own organization GRFDT global research forum on diaspora and and transnationality so I think we need to put our minds together and perhaps transgress from the techniques and from the tools themselves to the broader questions and that's where I think the shaking of hands between the activists and the academia becomes very very important and I have learned so many people from the field today but at the same time I realized that we need to take them back for analysis in the universities in the schools and so on and that's where I am reminded of the basic question that underlie the today's discussion I think this is called I would call it and I'm reminded of my own teaching class where I used to give a lesson on what is called technology curriculum lag you know technology curriculum lag is very very important in the sense that technological change is a continuous process whereas curriculum change you know it happens in leaps and bounds it does not happen continuously that I think is extremely important as has been also mentioned about the inequalities inequalities in the world and that's where the inequality lies not only in terms of access to technology but in terms of what we teach in the classroom that I think is extremely important look at the at the equality of our classrooms how are children we have addressed the issues of children the youth and of course gender issues all these are I think rooted in the question of inequality that we experience that is where I would tend to think that we need to have innovative thinking and not only innovative tools I was recently taking part in in Washington DC in a metropolis conference steering committee a metropolis meeting comes symposium and it was the IOM representative who presented a very very interesting finding of gender divide and particularly in terms of usage of of the internet by men and women and consistently across the regions it was shared that the participation during the covid period in in the use of internet by women was much lower than that of the men so what came to my mind and I raised I flagged this as a question as an observation that we need to keep in mind the engagement of women in society particularly in times of crisis like covid I think in caregiving or nursing of the of the people who were affected by covid I think the role of women was much more in terms of providing those care so out of 24 hours how much time do you give to caregiving and how much to internet that I think is the divide and that's where I think I would say that the priority of women would be to give care rather than to access the internet so the point is that we need to change our our our paradigms themselves should we all the time when we are thinking of gender compare men versus women or we should have independent benchmarks in which both men and women maybe below the benchmark or both of them maybe above the benchmark those are the questions that need to be flagged you know and we may not have the answers today but we will find the answers so this is where I find that the role that Maria played or Kazim played or even the the speakers played in terms of raising questions or the questions that I have seen in the chat box that have enriched this discussion today and it would only strengthen our partnership in taking these virtual exchanges further I thank you all for your patience listening thank you thank you professor vena just one last comment from our side we will launch a poll it's very quick just to know what have you learned if you enjoyed these exchanges of course if we answered it will be completely biased all the organizers we really enjoyed to listen from you so just please take two minutes to answer them because we try to always tailor the next exchanges to what the needs of the communities are so thank you very much paddy I don't know if you want to to just exchange a few words for the closing remarks well we answer them to the poll um what maybe maybe to extend a very warm thanks uh professor be not thank you very much for those closing remarks I think they leave us with a lot of inspiration as we move forward uh into trying to put together everything that we have heard in the last three sessions of of of the global exchanges I think it's been a delight to have the panel here today our fantastic moderators marika theme uh it was just enlightening to to hear you exchange with the panel and thank you so much I think we have so much rich content that we have to put forward and we look forward um into digesting it understanding what this would mean and translate into a report and this would obviously be shared through the iDAF platform and again many thanks to all the other co-organizers uh GDC uh MYCP who are not who I think MYCP is not here with us today but just to say thank you for all the background work that has happened at least I'm going to put somebody on the spot because we often don't see a Veronica I wanted to put you on the spot and I have been put on the spot so I thank you and just to say thank you to marika who has been um a great support for us uh in the organizers theme as well uh pushing us to send through those files when we have to update in the website and many different things but also uh engaging in uh in you know in all the in putting everything together yes there is Veronica and thank you so much uh for all the great work and thank you to everyone to our very lively audience diaspora organization diaspora and diaspora supporters I think it's been fantastic right and we look forward to using the report to engaging with you further thank you Larissa thank you thank you buddy and thank you to all the team thank you thank you thank you so much it was really nice to be part of this thanks thanks a lot thank you thank you for joining thanks thanks everyone and I want to thank uh thank prof again for his closing remarks he's really a great one thanks so much prof thank you very much thank you thank you for your optimism yeah also from my side a big thank you to all all the organizers and to the attendees and the speakers um there is a great team behind these virtual exchanges so again thanks to you and I hope that we can meet again next year with more interesting topics to discuss and to exchange about thank you so much um one second Maria can we take a screenshot uh like a photo and uh maybe I want to smile anyone that can bring on the camera I mean uh it's a good one yes great idea um I have to confess I don't know how to take the screenshot so maybe someone that is I'll do it I'll do it yeah that's good okay one two three smile well you can see me now Betty oh yeah we can't see you thank you so much I had actually written to blend to say we couldn't see you thanks then for trying and indeed for our interpreters who allow us to be able to exchange uh and understand each other thank you so much for the excellent work in the background thank you take care bye bye everyone bye bye