 Okay, I am going to have us get started because we don't have a lot of time and we have a lot of exciting speakers today. We're actually going to have 13 people talking during the next 90 minutes, so, oh, and myself, 14 people. All right, with that, before we get started, I wanted to draw your attention to the slide in front, noting that this session is being recorded to facilitate note-taking, and please let us know if you have any challenges or concerns with that. Thank you. And so my name is Jennifer Smith. Most of you probably saw me on stage earlier. I'm with the U.S. Forest Service, and I'm happy to be here today representing our Silver Carbon Program, which is a U.S. government interagency effort. It's funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State with key implementation by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Forest Service, with collaboration from many other sister agencies as well. Over the last several years, I wanted to point out that in this year alone, in 2023, Silver Carbon has close to 75 activities taking place across 32 countries, just to give you a scope of our program. As a capacity-building provider working in the realm of forest and carbon monitoring, several years ago, we noticed a concerning trend, which was that most of the people coming to our trainings were men, and so we wanted to take a deliberate approach to addressing this concern, and that's what you'll be hearing about over the next 90 minutes. We put together a variety of programs, a variety of ways to address this, so we'll be talking about those today. We're going to start with some opening comments from the Associate Chief of the Forest Service. We will also hear from FAO, Senior Forestry Officer Amy Duchel, and then we'll have three short presentations outlining Silver Carbon programs, we'll get to those in a moment, and after all of that, we're going to hear from eight panelists who have taken part in those programs. So excuse me if I feel like I'm rushing, but I am the least exciting person here. With that, I would like to turn it over to Associate Chief Coleman for some opening words. Thank you, Jennifer. Hi, Mitt. Thank you very much. That's helpful. I first want to extend my deepest gratitude to Global Forest Observation Initiative, GFOI, and the Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, for hosting this woman and climate side event. But I'm especially excited to hear about the findings of the Gender Research Program and to meet the wonderful panelists from the Women in Climate Action WCA program and the Women in Forest Carbon Initiative mentorship program called WIFSI. I've learned these words overnight. This side event provides an opportunity for us to champion all women in forest and carbon monitoring to increase their international experience, to build a global network, and facilitate international exchange among professional counterparts from around the world. Just last week, I was talking about this session with a very close colleague of mine, Dr. Torrell Patel-Waynen from the Forest Service. She's part of our R&D unit. She's a pioneer in this field of climate within the Forest Service. She's a woman of color as well. Torrell has fought hard and overcome many obstacles to get her voice in place at the table. She was very happy to hear that we would be talking about that in this space. I too have experienced a lack of support in the past. Seeing the results of programs such as WCA and WIFSI bring me great joy, inspiration, and frankly, hope as women play increasingly important and crucial roles in addressing our climate crisis. And last evening, I had the immense honor of dining with some of these incredible women from Cameroon and Gabon. They're breaking down barriers for their own countries against incredible odds. They shared their inspiring stories with me, and frankly, I'm full of their stories today, and I'm just grateful to see them here in this row. In that same spirit, I think back to my own personal story early in my career in the Forest Service when I was told as a 30-year-old early careerist that I had reached my highest potential as a communications officer in the Forest Service. Now, as one who loved our mission and the work we did to sustain forests and grasslands, I knew I could. I wanted to contribute more, but this moment was one of my biggest mental struggles with our agency, and it took me more than a year to come to terms with the pessimistic outlook that people had for my future, to motivate myself, thanks to many other supporters and people who could see possibilities that I couldn't see, to help me move past the limitations imposed by others. And so it's quite profound and an irony that some 15 years later, I stand or sit here today as the associate chief of that same Forest Service. I'm an African-American woman the first in over 100 years to hold this position, and I'm the second highest executive in this natural resource organization. Toward this end, I know what it means to be a woman and to not always have the support and advocacy necessary to move forward and confidently express a voice in critical dialogue that affects all of our futures, which is why being here today is so meaningful and so important to me. Gender equity is critical to the work of the United States Forest Service, and it is a key goal for both Chief Randy Moore and myself. Both of us have transcended and broken through racial and gender barriers, and it's this kind of consistent commitment to this work from many others that helped us break through. So our goal is to make sure there's room for many, many more at this table. Forest Service success depends on retaining a high-performing, performing representative and service-focused workforce that can serve all people. The success and equitable delivery of our mission depends on employees who mirror the people we serve, appreciate our different cultures and traditions, and build community and share stewardship with all citizens. And since the COVID-19 pandemic, our agency struggled to retain our employees, especially women. During this time, women were forced to make difficult choices to leave their employment behind to take care of their families. And this is a story many of us are familiar with. However, we often overlook it. Our agency is currently working hard to rebuild our recruitment efforts and focus on women and minority groups as we understand the importance and value and a diverse workforce bringing to the management of forests and conservation. All the work we do in the Forest Service would not be as impactful without the collaboration of our sister agencies. The United States Geological Survey conducted extensive research on women and the barriers they face as they consider their options, family commitments, and access to resources before embarking on their careers in the forest carbon monitoring and associated technical areas. As an avid learner and lifelong student, I'm looking forward to hearing about those findings. I have a feeling I'll be calling you afterwards. Silver Carbon recognizes the importance of gender equality in forestry and has included gender mainstreaming as a cross-cutting issue in its programs. When women are empowered to participate in forest management and conservation, they bring valuable skills and knowledge to the table, and they often have a deep understanding of the local ecology and the needs of their communities, and they are often more effective at engaging local people in conservation efforts. Women are also more likely to prioritize long-term health of the forest over short-term gains, which is critical for ensuring that forests are sustainably managed. As we work towards sustainable forest management and climate action, it is crucial to recognize and support women's contributions to this endeavor. The role of women in forests cannot be overstated. The work that each one of you do to support countries' efforts towards sustainable forest management and gender equity is admirable. It is inspiring. It also breaks barriers and shines a light on new possibilities for other women and girls and underrepresented groups. As global citizens, it is our responsibility to support such programs to achieve a sustainable and equitable future for all of us. It is also the responsibility of the leaders in the room that have broken down barriers to continue to lift up other women who are still struggling to break through. When all is said and done, all we want as human beings, all human beings, is to feel valued, to feel respected, to feel like we belong, and to know that our voice matters. The more we can do to help each other do that, the more our voices will be heard and the greater our impact will be. So I thank GFOI and FAO for hosting this important event. I thank and salute all the participants, panelists, and champions for women in forest and carbon monitoring. And let us continue to work together to support and empower women in this field. Thank you so much. This is Amy Ducal. She's a senior forestry officer and team leader of forest and climate in FAO's Forestry Division. We are excited to hear her remarks as well. Let me know when you want me to change the slides. Thank you, Jennifer. And it's an honor to be on this panel and sitting next to Angela Coleman. Thank you for those words. Your leadership is truly inspiring, so truly an honor to be here. Welcome to FAO. We're just so happy to have this place filled with a bunch of forestry people. Because the F in FAO doesn't stand for forestry. It stands for food. So sometimes we want to elevate more and more the importance of forests. So today, I have a few brief slides, in fact, just to show how important gender considerations are to FAO's work on climate change. And I'm speaking from FAO's Forestry Division, but I should say that for the organization as a whole in our strategic framework, one of the program priority areas is focused on gender. And we have a gender mainstreaming approach that goes through all of the work that we do. And so this is a much broader institutional push across the entire organization. So next, for those of you who were at COP 27, there was a lot of people there. And you may or may not have realized, but those who were actually in the negotiation rooms were fairly underrepresented in terms of female participation. It was something like 30% of the negotiators were women. And actually, that's a good number when you look at the family photo that was taken of heads of state and ministers where there was very little representation by women. And a really important initiative that FAO has been spearheading, Fida Haddad is here, if you can wave, is this WeCan initiative. It's a community of practice that's bringing together women-led organizations from developing countries and actually got a bunch of negotiators and civil society participants at COP 27 to make sure that those solutions were heard from people on the front lines of climate change. I think it's really important to understand that women and rural women and indigenous women are particularly and uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. But it's actually also that vulnerability that gives them the urgency of the solutions. And I think when we hear a lot about still climate denial, climate inaction, climate despair, that's often coming from a place of privilege. Those who say, actually, this isn't going to affect me, so I'm not going to do anything or I can't do anything. It's too overwhelming. But those who actually are the most vulnerable can't say that. And actually, that's why those solutions that are coming from that place of vulnerability are so very important. Next. We have a ton of forest and climate initiatives on the ground. Many of you know about the Red Plus work in the context of the UN Red Program, the UN Decade on Restoration. And really all of those, this is a photo from on the left, is from a photo from Honduras, where the Red Plus strategy with FAO support is all about empowering women and indigenous women and youth. And then on the right is a restoration project in Kenya where gender indicators are included in this from the very beginning. And then, of course, we're at the GFOI, so I do need to say a few words about monitoring. I think there's two aspects of monitoring that are important that we are focused on. One is actually just getting women into monitoring initiatives, as you were saying, Jennifer. So enhancing the participation, and we have a Jeff-led building global capacity to increase transparency in the forestry sector in the context of the enhanced transparency framework of the Paris Agreement, where all about capacity building and transparent monitoring, and 40% of the participation in that has been women. We also have our Peatland's monitoring work in Indonesia, where again 40% of those involved in that have been women, and that doesn't happen by chance. I mean, that's a very purposeful effort to get women involved in these monitoring efforts. And then there's the side of the indicators. So really ensuring that the indicators in monitoring are gender responsive, that they can measure changes in gender dynamics over time. Finding synergies between different reporting obligations, I think that's a lot of the complaints that we've heard that, oh, you're adding a gender element into reporting. We have to do more monitoring, more reporting, but actually finding clever ways to align with other reporting frameworks so that folks can actually focus on implementation of gender responsive and gender transformative programs and focus less on the reporting and monitoring piece of it. So actually getting the work done. And one sort of suggestion that came out of this project in Kenya was that the ministry responsible for gender and women's affairs could be a coordinating agency to ensure that this kind of alignment was taking place in the monitoring efforts. And then we get to my last slide, which I had to include because of Angela's comments this morning on fire. And this is a huge area of work for FAO. Huge challenges in terms of getting gender and integrated fire management. We know that this is a field that's largely led by men. It's a hyper masculine environment, especially when you get to the sort of the firefighting front of things. I'm proud to say that there's one UN fire management officer in the entire system. And this person is based at FAO. And this person is Lata Stile, who's sitting in the front row here. And I've been in many meetings with her, and it's her and the guys actually. She's really holding the for she before coming to FAO. She led Brazil's fire management program for 16 years. So we're very lucky to have her as of a year ago. And I should say that what we're we're initiating next week, there's a big international wild land fire conference happening in Portugal. FAO and UNEP will be launching a global fire management hub. And a key pillar of that hub is wildfire resilient communities and components of that include indigenous and traditional knowledge, community based fire management, gender equity, diversity and inclusion. And we're hoping that the secretary for for this initiative will be hosted at FAO. And we're actually using the GFLI model as an inspiration because it's so much about partners and so much about the many organizations that that in the case of fire are coming to the table. And we're hoping to really enhance the the gender dimensions of that work. So thank you. All right. Thanks, everyone. I'm Krista Straub. I'm a social scientist with USGS. Thanks for the great opening remarks to you both. Those were wonderful. I think you're going to connect a lot with these. I have too many slides because I kept trying to delete things. I'm like, no, they need to hear that. So you'll have to help just cut just cut me up. Oh, I should go back. So there's lots of great co-authors on this project and Renee is here and Sylvia is here and Gabby is here. So make sure you connect with them too. And there are some of our co-authors. We had some great student contractors, Abby McConnell, any of you that kind of worked on this project or help review things got to meet her and Sarah and so they put so much effort into this. So a big shout out to those superstars. So how did this get started? Sylvia came to me and said, can we use some social science to figure out what's going on with gender barriers? And I'm a social scientist with USES, but I do human dimensions of earth observations. So anything related to users and uses and value. So I was able to incorporate within this project. So we had that kind of goal from Sylvia figure this out was her guidance. And so we went and tried to address these questions about how do women navigate barriers? What are barriers to starting their career? What are some of those factors that are incorporated into that? And then some potential solutions from the participants. So actually kind of, you know, listening and using what they say with those solutions. So we first started with subject matter experts. We did interviews to kind of make sure we were on track with our questions. So it got lots of initial guidance. And then we did a deeper dive into these three countries randomly selected and we're able to interview women participants within those countries. We use these qualitative social science methods. And I bring this up because lots of times there's surveys that go on out there and they're great because you can reach so many people, but you don't know what they're thinking past like what they checked in the box. So these qualitative approaches allow you to have these very in-depth sort of conversations. And then you look across the conversations for things that themes that are similar, but you also look for unique components, things that we can learn and take to the next step. These are theoretical frameworks that are used in social science. I just threw up a whole bunch of different random ones. And I bring this up because lots of times we get this sort of question like, hey, could you give us the one answer that will help women in whatever discipline, right? And human behavior and human decision and decision making and how to help women is really complicated. So there's not this perfect fit per individual, let alone across countries or within a discipline. So these are frameworks are just to show you how complicated that sort of concept is. So for this study, we did intersectionality for our framework, not going to dive into that. But basically it's about the intersection of identities. Identities are not additive. Many of you will kind of understand that, right? It's kind of this complicated meshing. It's not just adding different sort of maybe I'm a woman and I'm indigenous or right. So all of those are mixed together. They're not added on top of each other. And then they're relational and socially constructed. So what did we find? We have a publication out now that you can go look at. So I'm just going to give you little hints here. So what we found that these individuals opportunities and forest carbon monitoring are affected by combined identities, right? I don't have a planar, but you can see here. Is that working? Oh, maybe. Yeah, a little bit. So we have this personal identity, right? So we have these identities and this one is age. And then if you go across what contributes to age, right? So it may be something perceived about their physical strength. And then we have these wonderful quotes from the women participants and then the countries that they're from. So all of that is in there. We also have these structural factors that come into play. So things like education. And then we have these social constructions. Not how women perceive themselves, but how they're perceived. So perhaps a woman is trying to go for a leadership position. And women may be perceived as not being good leaders, right? Compared to men. So all of those factors come into play when women are trying to go through the forest carbon monitoring job. We have lots and lots of sort of great information from the women. We're working on another report that gives you a lot more detail about their quotes and the things that they've incorporated. So we have many areas where gender barriers come show up, if you see that list on the left. And that was across countries, right? So education, hiring, work, promotions, workshops. The scale of barriers was found at all different sort of wide-ranging levels too across all countries. We did try to go, oh, the little things blocking it. But we also tried to figure out things that are different within each country. So we have some of those factors included. And then that intersectional component that I mentioned, right? So the intersectional component is those combined identities. So perhaps you're a woman, but you're indigenous. Or we receive lots of comments about the knowledge of local women that wasn't being used for decision-making. So that came up quite a bit. We asked them about their, the participants, about the importance of women in future Earth observation. So you can see, I'm going to try to minimize that. I'm going to move it. OK, there we go. So research has shown that women actually use the force more than men. So if you involve women that may have better knowledge, the result will be more accurate. These are just participants' quotes from what we asked them. They thought that women would make a lot of different decisions if they were leaders. And if the women were equal to men, they'd have more access to financial resources. And then the chances of them being harassed or biased would diminish if they have that equal sort of leadership. This participant thought women would be more empathetic and more transparent in their decision-making. OK, hold on for this one. So this one came up a lot, as you can see here. These are all the many, many quotes and comments about motherhood. And if you probably went out and asked someone and said, what's a barrier for women in forced carbon monitoring? I'm guessing they might say motherhood, right? And so we see this so often. But I think the important note about this from our participants is that even though it's been talked about forever, that there's not a lot of action that's being done for the barrier of motherhood. So important to remember that action part. And this just kind of shows the continued importance of gender inclusion. So there's lots of other sort of things to look at. And some of these studies point out, right? If you have inclusion, you're likely to retain women more, better outcomes, lots of innovation, right? When you have these diverse teams, you have innovation, improving work. They won't have to lots of women feel that they have to prove themselves, right? Work extra hard to get to that same sort of position. They identify different problems. They think differently, more democratic decision-making. And this last one kind of always hits home with me for some reason. You need a super majority of women on a team for all the members of the team to speak in equal amounts. I'm kind of quiet too, so that may be part of it. But so just some additional support for some of the things that we were finding in this study too. So where are we headed? So we have actually talked a lot, Angela, about a lot of women talked about leadership, right? Like they're in a certain position and really struggling with either going into leadership, what they need to do, the difficulties once you're there. We've had a lot of women within these studies that talked about leaving leadership positions because they were so hostile. So that's one of a way that we could move forward with some of these different ideas. Talking to participants in other countries is important. We only talked to the three countries. The value of local and indigenous knowledge came up a lot. But again, the comment related to that was there's not a lot of action related to that. It's just identified as a problem, but not really any way to move forward. We did this kind of ecosystem approach for this Landsat data ecosystem. And we were thinking of looking at women in a network, like a social network analysis, right? So what are the connections, where the lessons learned, how are communications being done? It seems like for gender, from our participants, that sector might make a difference for solutions, that there could be solutions specific to certain sectors. So diving into that more, thinking about case studies and local presentations, a lot of women asked us to come back and talk to their organization about the findings. Lots of times she may go and have this study and then what happens, right? So how can we get that information back out at the local level? And then we're working on an underserved, underrepresented project in Earth observation and we're expanding our team. So if anyone's interested in this, please reach out to me. We're always looking to combine efforts on this. For some applied solutions, one of the, we have these kind of more complex, like how do we figure these things out, sort of steps? And then we have some that could be started right away. And Sylvia with the Sylva Carbon Program has already done this with one of their trainings, where they made a training that was just for women, right? And so you can kind of see some of the previous training photo and then this one up front, which was a recent one. And a lot of women asked for that, that we interviewed was like, it'd be great to have a training that was just women so I can have a larger voice. I can understand better. I don't have to feel like I don't know everything. And then we've also been working with, within the US with one of our indigenous nations, the Navajo Nation. And we're working on a Landsat app that has time series of just the Landsat, or the Navajo Nation. And it's in English and Navajo. So there's a lot more complicated things that need to be done for that, but just starting with some of those simple steps can be helpful. And then Monica, who's in the back of the room is a communication expert with Sylva Carbon. And she's done a great job of trying to get our information in a more sort of readable, useful, general public setting. So she's created this website and on the website there's different pages per country that she's pulled out, some of them were applied like actions that could happen. And it links to the report that I've been mentioning. There's a QR code, so make sure you check that out too. I think that, I'm done. That's it, I'm done. Okay, are you done? All right, so we're gonna switch to Olivia who's going to, you can't hear me. We're gonna switch to Olivia who's gonna talk about the Women and Forest Carbon Initiative. Hello everybody. My name's Olivia Freeman. I work for the US Forest Service International Program and I help to manage and implement programs in Africa with Sylva Carbon. Today I am presenting on behalf of a much larger team on the Women and Forest Carbon Initiative mentorship program. And I think Jennifer actually did a great job and Jennifer actually already kind of touched upon it but the origins of this program really came from the recognition that there was gender disparity and program implementation. Like many of you, we have indicators we need to report on and year after year we were finding that a lot of our trainings and people trained were predominantly men and we tried to try different approaches, different years to change that but I think what we kind of came to was the fact that a lot of our partnership partners and people who were in technical positions and team happened to be men with notable exceptions. There are some amazing technical women out there but the majority were men. And so we, at the global level for Sylva Carbon we've developed this mentorship program as one approach to start to try to address some of the barriers that Krista just very eloquently presented and then afterwards you'll also hear from my colleague Texiana on another program which is focused in Central Africa. So the Women in Forest Carbon Initiative approach, again USGS the research study and Forest Service focus on this pilot mentorship program. Here's a little sneak peek of many people who have participated in the first phase. And the main objectives of the program were to increase the engagement experience and visibility of women within the global Sylva Carbon community and enhance and solidify institutional commitments to gender equity among Sylva Carbon institutions. And in order to do so, it aimed to provide women, students in Sylva Carbon countries with professional experience, learning opportunities and mentorship focus on careers in the field of forest carbon monitoring while also championing women in forest and carbon monitoring professionals in Sylva Carbon countries as well as in the US government, Sylva Carbon agencies. And at the same time building a network of women working on pursuing careers in forest and carbon monitoring and facilitating international exchange among professional counterparts. So how this program worked was different country teams were put together. They included two in-country mentees, two in-country mentors, two US based mentors and a coach which was a specialist in mentoring professional development and career coaching. So here is an example of the Vietnam team. These teams worked together at the country level but also engaged across all of the different program participants and engaged in different professional development training and coaching as well as the mentees engaged in specific research projects that they were able to develop and implement in coordination with both in-country and US government mentors. And so this is where the pilot program was implemented. Cameroon Democratic Republic of Congo engagement from the US and Vietnam. And you'll notice that there are no Latin American countries in the program but that was because our Latin American team decided in their specific context they really wanted to focus on the networking piece. And so they did kind of a side initiative that really focused on developing a professional network of women in forest carbon. So we didn't neglect this region we just decided in this specific case there was a different approach. So these are some of the examples of the projects occurring or that have been undertaken in Cameroon, Vietnam and DRC. And today we are very, very fortunate to have several people in the room who you'll be here presenting but also their mentors. So I'm gonna stop there and really let them share with you in the panel session more about their experiences. Yeah, so thank you. And I forgot to mention if you want to learn more about the program Jennifer is managing at the global level. Thank you for giving me the floor. I am Tatiana Nanna. I'm working as a climate technical advisor for the US Forest Service in Central Africa. I'm very excited to speak today about the Central Africa Women Initiative. Since it's not sharing. One moment please. Okay, thank you. I am Tatiana Nanna. I was saying that I'm very excited to speak today about the WCA program the Central Africa Women Initiative for Climate Action. The US Forest Service through its international program, Silver Carbon, the Department of State Climate Fellow Program, the CARPE Program supports Congo-based countries in meeting their monitoring and reporting obligations to the UNFCCC through direct technical assistance and training. Based on the observation that the overall involvement of women in programs and positions related to sustainable management and climate change response is low. The program aims at strengthening the capacities and enhance the involvement of Central Africa women in climate change process in general and carbon accounting in particular through a one and a half year program including national workshops, webinars on greenhouse gas accounting and international reporting frameworks, a diploma program on greenhouse gas MRV at the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute, participation at national and international conferences, internships in national and even international and regional institutions working in climate change and related fields. Within the framework of the program, we encourage national and regional networking among the WICA ladies and at the end of each training cohort, we organize closeout meetings for diploma presentation. The surface of the WICA program started in early 2021 with the recruitment of 104 fellows from Cameroon, DRC, Gabon and ROC. The second phase started in May 2022 and it's still ongoing and we extended the program to the Central Africa Republic with the recruitment of 14 fellows and we are planning to start the third phase of the program in July 2023 focusing especially in two countries, Equatoria Guinea and Central Africa Republic. So for the first phase, the outcomes are 104 women involved, trained and among the 104 women, 35 completed their greenhouse gas management institute diploma, 21 completed also their internship in national institutions working on climate change issues, five participated at the COP26 in Glasgow and supported their respective delegations and also most of them were participating in national greenhouse gas and venturing processes in their respective countries. This is our success story in the image. As the previous speakers said, the ultimate goal of this program is for the fellows to find jobs. So this is the 10 ladies, there's one photo missing but this is the 10 ladies among the 35 who followed the who completed the GSD management institute program who find jobs in their respective countries. So in the second phase of the program, 95 women were involved and were trained, 25 women are currently taking their diploma courses at the GSD management institute, 25 of the same 25 are currently following their internships in national institutions working on climate change and nine women participated at the COP27 in Sharma, Shakespeare, supporting their respective national delegations. Another success story is that among the ladies, eight of them now are registered at the roster of experts of the UNF 2.0C. So if you want to have more information about the program, here are some links, thank you. Thank you so much Tatiana and Olivia and Krista for giving us the background of the detailed overview of those programs that as I said earlier have really been working together sort of to bring together different pieces of how we're taking a deliberate approach to getting more women involved in this field. At this point, we're going to take a bit of a stretch break. We're going to switch who's up here on the panel and bring up several of our program participants. So Olivia, if I could ask you to switch the signs. Thank you for your patience while we get everybody included so much better. Okay, we are so excited to have these panelists on the stage with us today. I'm actually going to ask you before I start with the questions, we're just going to go down the row and if you could say your name and where you're from, your country and the agency or organization that you're representing. So could we start with you? You have to turn the microphone's on, yeah. Hello everyone, my name is Shen Tengdu. I'm from Vietnam and I'm a mentee of women in forest, have one in native. Hello everyone, my name is Cao Thi Thinh Nguyen. I come from Vietnam, I'm living in Hanoi and working at Phoebe, yeah, that's all, thank you. So, hello everyone and nice to meet you. And my name is Nguyen Thi Hoa and you can call me Hoa as well. And I'm a final year student at Vietnam National University of Forestry and I'm from Vietnam, thank you. Hello everyone, my name is Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lam. I'm from Vietnam. I am working at Forest Inventory and Planning Institute. I'm a mentor of Vietnam, WFCI. Yes, this time to zone WFCI is a valuable time for me and Vietnam team. Thank you, yes. My name is Ndale Sofi Patience. I'm from Cameroon and I'm PhD student in University of Yawunde 1 in Department of Plain Biology and I have the opportunity to participate in the program Women in Forest Carbon Initiative. Thank you. Hello everyone, I'm Cajofedru Aung Sonia. I am a mentee in the WFCI program. I'm from Cameroon. I'm also a PhD student at the University of Yawunde 1 speciality agro-climatology, thank you. Hello everyone, I'm Ariane Mouamba from Cameroon. I have participated in the Women Initiative in Climate Action in Cameroon. I am still PhD student in University of Yawunde 1 in Biology Plain, thank you. Hello everyone, I'm Anaique Moudinga. I'm a Gabonese and I'm participating to the WCA program, thank you. It's so wonderful to have you all here on the stage with us today. I believe that if you want to listen in French to your colleagues while they're speaking, the interpreters are still translating. So if you want to put the headsets back on when it's not your turn, you can if that makes things easier. Okay, I'm going to start off. We have some questions for the panelists to learn about their experience in the programs. And the first question I'm going to ask is, can you tell us why you personally wanted to get involved in climate action or carbon measurement and what makes you passionate about this area of work? And I'm going to ask our colleague too to be our first respondent. For me, actually I grew up in the rural mountainous area of Vietnam and 90% of humans in my hometown is ethnic minorities and 70% of humans, they lie dependent for us. So however, in 2008, he fluctuated trying my hometown, taking away all the sad men, arrive, use, and guess what, we have full shortage for months and children like me cannot go to school. The forest option have been due to the sorry, rodents, illegal logings and farming activities and eventually causing this flood. But because of these events, it motivates me to study and protect and share with my communities about the rural forest to prevent the disaster. So while studying and working in the universities, I take part in many research and volunteers' programs. Because at that time I started to participate in these areas and because it helped me to think how I can contribute to the forest, that was my community. Thank you so much. And Lam, we would like to ask you the same question. What made you personally want to get involved in this field? Thank you for your question. Capon, dioxide, emission, mainly stemmed from human activity that are posing a global challenge in the fight against climate change. Forestry is no exception to this struggle. And for a long time, forests have always applied an extremely important role of protecting environment and contributing to the sustainable socio-economic development for each country. In the context of increasingly severe climate change with a predictable consequences, forests are the savior in maintaining the source of life and the ability to protect people against natural luxuriation and natural disaster, as well as mitigating climate change and its negative impacts. The World Meteorological Organization has long recognized that women are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than men because they make up the majority of the world poor and demand more heavily on the natural resources. As a woman and an engineer working in forestry, I am delighted to develop my efforts toward this struggle against climate change for a better future. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you so much. The next question that I would like to ask is prior to participating in the Women in Climate Action or the Women in Forest Carbon Initiative, how did you feel about getting involved in research or technical work related to greenhouse gas or carbon monitoring? Did it seem like something you'd be able to accomplish? Why or why not? And let's see, I would like to ask Huyen to be our first respondent to this question. Yes. I'm a mentor of Vietnam, WSCI. Before 1990, I was an editor of the country's public housing house. Then I transferred to the FIBI. So I have a little experience about carbon monitoring. Before I enjoyed WSCI, I had a professional experience for work, including global land exploration and analysis overview. G.I.S. application in the Chien-Wing Huong for Red Carbon Monitoring. We participated in the international workshop on application of remote sensing technology to build an early warning system for the forest, lost and chained land use purple in Da Nang city. And listened to experts from other countries to discuss and interview the early warning system before reticent and change the land use. All of these are very useful for my work. Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. It's great to hear these concrete examples of how hard it was to get into the field before you had some concrete experience. Next, let's see. Hoa, would you like to answer the same question? How did you feel about getting involved in this field before you had the opportunity to participate in this program? Yes, thank you for your question. Nice question. In May 2021, I was introduced by the faculty of the university to join the WSCI program. At that time, I don't have more experience about the field work or have a little knowledge about the green holcas or climate change. And yes, when I enjoyed the WSCI program, the program treats me or gives me a lot of lessons, a lot of experience. Yes, so I want to tell you some activities in the program. In April 2022, we have a field trip in the West Nhi An province of Vietnam with project application, a monthly short, remote sensing to estimate the biomass in every green forest. And in December 2022, we participated in the international workshop, early warning system, and now we have the opportunity to attend the international workshop in Rome, Italy. So now you can see I have a lot of changes to improve my shell, and I can have a lot of lessons to improve my shell and to learn more about the in-country women and international women. Yes, that's all. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's really important. I think everybody in this room knows that hands-on experience is a really important part of learning whatever career we're going to be in. So having programs that are set up to bring that experience in is really important. The next question I'd like to ask you is what challenges or barriers have you personally encountered as you try to advance in your studies or career related to forestry, climate change, or greenhouse gas monitoring? And first, I'd like to ask Sophie Patience to respond to this. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. The main challenge for me was to review the idea that I had on forestry because I was just limited on the simple fact that forestry was just counting, measuring and identifying trees. And through this program, I learned another part of forestry like learning the tree cover monitoring through GIS and mood sensing. The other challenge for me is that being a beginner in the field is not easy for me to have a place in the organization and institution who deal with climate change and forestry because they often prefer people who are already experts in the field. Thank you. Yeah, I will share that I also, at one point, thought that forestry was just measuring trees and now I know it's so many more things. All right. Let's see. Sophie, Sonia, would you also like to answer that question? Yes. Thank you, Jennifer, for giving me the floor. For me, the main barrier was the fact that I was not have sufficient knowledge and experience in the domain and that made it very difficult my institution in the social professional domain so it was not easy to just switch from geography, specialty, agro-climatology to forestry. And now a day, thanks for US Forest Services and thanks for the Women's Forest Carbon Initiative Program. I have learned a lot and I do not get only knowledge but also experience and it's more, it's easy and possible for me to have insurance and I can just go to opportunity which is related to, which requires expertise in climate change with more confidence. Thank you. Thank you so much for that answer. As we can all see, there are a lot of different things that come into play when we're all trying to gain confidence in a new career and a lot of barriers that can get in the way. The next question I'd like to ask is actually about these two programs. What specifically was the most useful aspect of the Women in Climate Action or the Women and Forest Carbon Initiative Program for you? Please describe that and why specifically it was beneficial. Ariane, would you like to go first? Thank you for giving me the floor. For me, the most useful aspect of the WCAG program was the internship because during the WCAG program, the girl was encouraged to take internship in the national institution who creates climate change. It was so useful for me because at the end of my internship, I have signed a contract with the National Authority of Climate Change in my country, which is ONAG. That is why I think that internship was so beneficial for me. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing those insights on how the internship was beneficial. Next, Anayak, am I pronouncing that right? Would you like to answer the same question? Thank you for giving me the floor. As part of the WCAG program, the most important aspect for me were first the GHA, Management Institute Diploma Program, and also the opportunity to participate in person and support our national delegations during international discussions on climate negotiations, such as COP26, the African Climate Week, the One Forest Summit. Basically, this allowed me to extend my professional network with experts on climate change issues. Thank you. Thank you all. I have one more question for you, which any of you can answer. Someone can volunteer. If there were some young schoolwomen sitting in the room today, maybe 14 or 15 years old, what encouraging words would you offer to them or how would you encourage them to get involved in this field? Would anybody like to take a stab at that question? Yes, I'd be happy to repeat the question. If there were young women, schoolgirls, maybe 14 or 15 years old sitting in the audience, what advice would you offer them today? Or what words would you say to encourage them in their career or even as they're finishing school? I can take it. Okay. At this stage, if I could just advise a young sister that climate change sciences is like a never-ending process and it's changed. Everyone has a role to play in the fight against climate change, so everyone must feel concerned about it. If they intend to start this long process, they need to be patient, they need to be humble, and they need to be very, very strong because for me, this characteristic may be held high if they want to succeed. Thank you. Ariane. Thank you. Something that I would like to add to what Sonya has said is that we don't have to say that we have finished school. If you want to improve yourself, you have to learn every day to reach any time, anywhere, everything that you can see which is important for you in your career or in your domain. You have to learn every day. You don't see that you have finished with school. You learn every day and learn a lot. Thank you. It is indeed an ongoing process. Do we have one more answer? Please go ahead. I think climate change is one of the most serious challenges in our world. Today, our planet is experiencing scientific and a significant climate change. We are beginning over the country ago. We have a duty to take action to prevent the climate from getting worse. I think let's fight against climate change and try to grow the world. That is my idea. Thank you so much for those encouraging words. We actually have a question coming in in the chat. Not a question. More of a comment. Just to repeat that for the microphone, a comment from the chat is thanking FAO for this initiative and this session today and asking when the next trainings are. We can respond to that afterwards. I would like at this point to take questions from the audience and I see a hand up already. Sarah, oh, and the microphone. Perfect. First, I want to express my appreciation for our male colleagues sitting with us in the room. And despite your presence here, we have a what I would call a super, super majority of women. We are super. And my question is, what can we do to make this an issue for everyone and not just women? So if any of the panelists would like to answer that question, but I would also include those of us who were here on the stage earlier, if you'd like to respond. And in the spirit of acknowledging the male colleagues in the room, I would like to acknowledge Rene Siwe, who was really instrumental in starting the Women in Climate Action Program. Anybody have a response to Sarah's questions? Let's not let that be a rhetorical question. Please. I want more precision. Is it that the climate change question concerns everyone or just the program? I want you to precise the question. Yes. Or clarify the question. So the fact that we have so many women here in the room and so few men and we appreciate our male colleagues being here, I want to be clear about that. And we've all chosen to come here. How do we turn this into enough of an issue for everyone that we have more male colleagues in the room with us saying that it's an issue not just for women, but also for them. It's an issue for everyone to have more gender equity. I could add that concerning this initiative, for example, concerning the Women's Forest Carbon Initiative, if you want to, you can just add the number of mentee, for example. And also, I think that the communication or you don't have enough communication about the different program. And if we can just work on it, we could have more people who show interest in it. And also, if I could just downscaling at the national level, for example, the government need to work with international organizations very closely, for example, to just introduce or insist on the fact that climate change is a global problem and everyone needs to bring his contribution. So if at the bottom, we can just show that interest for every women and also insist on the fact that women also can, if I can say that. So I think in this way we can have some change. Thank you. Thank you so much for that answer and I see another question in the back of the room. Not really a question, thank you. I think I'm just trying to make a contribution to a question and if I understand you very well, you mean in a way that we can have more men participating here even though it's a women program. Okay, for me, this is what I understand. I just feel like when it comes to mentorship, if we really want to get the men involved because this is women in forestry and the men will feel like, okay, it's a woman thing, you guys should do your thing. So I feel if we really want to get the men involved, we should also try to assign women, young women to men to mentor them in the field and when they try to invest in women, they want to see how far they go and I feel they want to be here to actually get some acknowledgement like, yeah, these are my mentees. This is the impact of what I have done and that's where they'll feel carried along because it's somehow, you know, when you say women in forestry, like, okay, go and do your thing and they try to, but if they get more involved, like the action is there and they feel like, yeah, my impact is here. They will want to participate. Thank you very much. Other questions or comments from the room, perhaps questions for our panelists? I was just going to follow up on that same question which is some of the meetings I've been to have been trying to raise awareness and emphasize the importance. There's a lot of competing interest, but this session is one of the sort of main events or sessions can also kind of bring more awareness to some of these issues. Any questions from the room? Or maybe panelists, do you have any questions for the audience? Janet. I want to thank everybody for their participation today. This has been really, really nice and it's just been lovely to hear from all of you and I'm thinking about as you get through your next stages of your career. I wasn't quite sure, but is the WFCI and the WCA program, are they set up so that each of you get an opportunity to be a mentor for future cohorts? Is that something that's happening or could be an idea to think about? Maybe, I don't know. That's a great question. Would any of you on the panel like to respond to the idea of being a mentor? They can respond as well. Yeah, so it's actually something which was one of the recommendations from the first week of cohort to enable, to de-actually formulate a recommendation that they would like to continuously play a role as we bring in new generations of WCA fellows. So we've been doing that to a certain extent, especially during the, there are so-called in-country workshops, so we always have the WCA fellows of the previous cohort come in and also share their experiences. But I think now that we are having WCA fellows and we've seen mentees already in professional positions, even for future WCA cohorts, we could actually have former WCA mentees as mentors to new cohorts. So I think there is a wide range of possibilities there that we could definitely exploit. Thanks. And I'll briefly add that the WCA program, the Women in Forest Carbon Initiative is sort of at the end of its first iteration and we're beginning to frame the second iteration, so we're still figuring out exactly what that looks like, but we definitely do want to keep people involved. All right. Let's take one last question from the audience here. Thank you. It was inspiring. It was awesome to hear all of you. I was just curious, like in, from the United States and probably the percent of women at universities now is 55 or 60 percent. So, like, things look good for you in the future. And I was just curious if that, I don't know what the trends are internationally. I was just curious in your countries, in terms of education in the next generation, what the ratios are like. Yeah. Thanks for that question, Paul. To clarify the question, in each of your countries, approximately what is the percentage of women in universities? So, if you look at the university classes, what percentage of those classes are women? Yeah, that's a good addition to the question, actually, that Paul just mentioned. Does it depend on the topic? So, for example, maybe literature might be more women, forestry might be fewer women, or maybe forestry is more women not to study literature anymore. University, especially in my department, we have most women in forestry courses because the women have take that course as a challenge because they observe that we have, in the past, we have most men in the courses, but in the literature department. Also, we have most women. Women in my country prefer literature. Yes, they prefer literature. Now, I can say in my country, we have most women in the university. Thank you. Thank you so much. And remind us what country you were from? My country is Cameroon. Thank you. Did I see any? Yes, please. Okay. Something that I would like to add is that the problem is not education because when you see the percentage in Cameroon, you can see that the woman is, the percentage of women who study is low, is high than the percentage of men in any domain or sector in the education. But when you see climate change, you have a problem because the woman is the person who is more affected by the climate change because she is the person who will have to do anything for their family, in their school, in their home, in any way, which is something that men cannot, men can do it, but it is not, we can say, their job because in their country we have something that is specifically for the girl or for the woman. Something that I would like to say is that in education, we don't have the problem for this, but it is in the practice, in the world, in the job, in other size, but not in education. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. That is a really important point that sometimes what we see in the educational system doesn't flow up all the way to leadership or policymaking in general. So that's another area to think about things. All right, I think with that, we are right at time and I want to give our panelists here another huge round of applause, not only for speaking, but first of all, not only for traveling all the way here to be on the panel today and not only for speaking today, but for your accomplishments in your program this past year or two. Before we go away, two more things. We have certificates for each of you that if I could ask Associate Chief Coleman to come up, we will hand those out to you right now before you go away and then of course we would like to do a group photo, so don't run away. I should clarify, these certificates are specifically for the women and forest carbon participants. So, Angie Sonia, maybe you could walk over to her. That's okay, I'll bring it over to you. The next, oh, we have a runner. Sophie Patience. Next is to Ms. Huyen. Next is to Ms. Lam. Next is to Ms. Hoa. And last but not least, to Ms. Tu. And that's not in any way to say that our women in climate action participants are less. It just so happened that the sort of graduation or culmination of our Washington, D.C. based program coincided with this trip and we were able to distribute the certificates today. So, thank you so much. And again, let's do a round of applause and then we'll gather for a photo. So, if I could have everyone who is on the early panel come up here and stand, perhaps those of you who are already here can stay seated and we can have the other people come and just stand behind you. Just so everyone knows, we will be having gelato and sparkling wine in the atrium after this once before people start disappearing and then there will be drinks on the top floor at 6pm. 6pm. And anyone going on the city tour tomorrow in case someone hasn't told you wear comfortable shoes because it's a little bit of walking. Alright, thanks.