 Hello everyone. So we will have our pledging platform that's going to help us to mobilize the necessary connectivity commitments. We're looking of course to global commitments to regional commitments as well as to national commitments. And this does correspond directly as I said to the UNSG's digital cooperation roadmap and it also corresponds to different pieces of the common agenda that is working to advance a global digital compact. And of course as I said the LBC5 part one piece where we have the DOHA draft program of action that hopefully will be endorsed tomorrow. So with that I will stop and I will hand back to you David to dive us into our discussions. Thank you. Thank you Doreen. Yes and I was so busy doing logistics. I don't know if you said I know I was supposed to say that WTDC the World Telecommunications Development Conference is taking place in Kigali, Rwanda from 7th to the 9th of June. And I am personally very excited to be involved in such important work connecting the world is indispensable to progress. So I really am the SDGs and this key part of the SDGs are so critical. So now it's my pleasure to go to our first virtual speaker. Clement Namangale the deputy permanent representative of Malawi for the United Nations here in New York representing the chair of the Global Coordination Bureau of the least developed countries. So Clement please let's hear your remarks. Thank you very much. Distinguished panelists your excellences ladies and gentlemen I'm Clement Namangale representing the LDCs but I'm the deputy permanent representative from Malawi in New York. As chair of the Global Coordination Bureau of the least developed countries we are very pleased to be part of this very special dialogue today. As is clearly known the LDCs are left far behind at the tail of the countries that have no connectivity at all. Only less than three in every 10 people are using the internet in the LDCs. There is also many and varied but some of them in most of our countries the cost of services and devices is very high. There is a lack of digital skills and also low levels of awareness of the internet and what the benefits of the internet are. Another issue is the lack of relevant and local content. We have seen firsthand how the low levels of internet utilization has made it extremely challenging for people in LDCs to fully function either socially or economically during the ongoing pandemic. Children are unable to attend online schooling. E-Health is all but a dream. Access to many other government services were impacted due to the lack of e-government services. There are many such examples but will not go through them. However, I would like to stress that the international community recognizes the importance of the meaningful connectivity. In the LDC program of action that will be adopted tomorrow there are several references to the need for safe, affordable and meaningful digital connectivity. Among others, the DOHA program of action for LDCs calls for doubling the broadband internet penetration in LDCs to reach at least 70% by 2031 and in increasing finance to support the development of domestic digital agenda. The call to build human capacity and capital through skills development including digital skills and literacy brings to mind the important work being done by ITU and other partners on these issues. Another important aspect in the DOHA program of action for LDCs is the need to enhance the stakeholder support to strengthen digital capacity that's building for LDCs. Therefore, this meeting and this initiative is coming at a very, very important time. It will go a long way in helping to achieve the program of action and also to achieve the sustainable development goals and clearly digitalization is now the gold standard in achieving any development goals. I'm looking forward to hearing the pleasure that can help us move forward on this meaningful connectivity. We therefore look towards working with the ITU, the UN or HRLS, the Office of the Tech Invoy, the private sector and other stakeholders. And I thank you all for listening. We're looking forward to hearing from you all. Thank you. Thank you so much, Clement. Very good to have you. Now I'd like to introduce Maria Francesca Spadalizano, Acting Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology and Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Interagency Affairs at DASA of the United Nations for her special remarks. So welcome, Maria Francesca. Thank you so much, David. And colleagues, I would like to start by saying that universal connectivity is the foundation of the Secretary-General's vision for an open, free and secure digital future for all. As it is enshrined in his roadmap for digital cooperation and now in the common agenda, as you have already mentioned, these are the two references for the work of our office. Our collective will, and it's important to have the will to move the needle forward. On universal connectivity has shown results, but we need to keep the pressure on this issue. And PTC's efforts are crucial. And we especially value PTC's focus on the underserved communities and countries, such as the LDCs. And we just heard about the DOA program of action and the many important points made in that document. So we at the UN are now preparing for the global digital compact as proposed by the Secretary-General. And this is going to be part of a summit of the future to be held next September 2023. The work being done here is a crucial building block for the compact's goal of achieving universal connectivity and laying the foundation for what can and must be done. For instance, the Action Framework and pledges by partners outline the key principles and commitments that we urgently need as part of the digital compact and the decade of action prestige and need to include the voices from the global south. And this is crucial, of course, for the balanced outcome in this compact. And I count on the PTC and all of you to bring real action and concrete outcomes to the compact process, which starts now building on the important work already done in implementing the roadmap for digital cooperation. And in this regard, I am especially looking forward to the forthcoming launch at the next PTC meeting of a framework, baseline, and targets for major universal connectivity, which many of you have worked on together with us and ITU. And this will be instrumental in helping us realize our ultimate goals of connecting the unconnected, the end bridging the digital divide. We really must of that. Thank you for your attention. Thank you so much, Maria Francesca. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Heidi Schroder as Fox, who is here with us in person, which is kind of exciting. Heidi is the acting high representative for the least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing states. Heidi, over to you and you can use that. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you very much. And a very good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are, real great pleasure to be here in person. And thank you very much for inviting me today to this exciting event. Yes, OHRLS, that's the acronym for my office. It's not the easiest one. It's we are a small office directly underneath the UN Secretary General. And our mandate is really to advocate and support and make sure that the UN supports in the best possible way the most vulnerable 91 countries, member states of the UN. And when you think that there are 193 member states and 91 of them are either least developed landlocked or small island developing state, that's a large number, almost half of the UN member states. So the issue at stake today, what we are discussing is extremely important. And extremely important in the digital connectivity is building partnerships for in order to support these countries. And I really thank ITU. And I thank the tech invoice office for your very important work in support of these vulnerable countries that's meaningful connectivity is one of the key things for their for their future. So if our overall ambition is universal connectivity, and I think it surely must be, then that is a journey that must begin in these vulnerable countries. When you think about them, LDCs of course are at the bottom of the of the development ladder with the most challenges. Small island developing states have very vulnerable to climate and economic shocks. And think about the landlocked countries, how difficult for them, for example, this time when many of the borders have been closed, and they are depending on their neighbors for in order to be able to do trade and get necessary things. So digital connectivity in the future is absolutely crucial. I'm a native of Finland, which I think many of you know is is built on really in innovation and understanding the transformational potential that of technology and better services, increased efficiency and new economic opportunities that come comes with it. The majority of people are yet to see these benefits. However, as I as we mentioned in these countries, and I think one important number to think about is that although 75% of people living in the LDCs are covered by mobile broadband network, only slightly more than 25% are using it. And so this is really why the partner to connect digital coalition is so very, very important. And it's particularly heartening that we will hear some pledges. I am really looking forward to that, that will help close the digital device as a part of this LDC five conference. As was mentioned here today, this conference will open tomorrow. It's once in a decade conference that adopts a new program of action and much of that program of action also links to the work of trying to build the digital divide. So we had to postpone this conference already twice. It was supposed to be held in January this year, but it was instead postponed to the fifth and from the fifth to the ninth of March 2023. And it will be held in Doha, Qatar. But so tomorrow we will open this conference. This is a very unique way of organizing it. It's not usual, but we want to make sure that this new program of action for the least both countries, the Doha program of action, can start implementing. We can start implementing it immediately. We don't have to wait till a year in Doha. So when we go to Doha, we are actually going there for talking about these kinds of partnerships that we will discuss later today. And in town today, we have the president of Malawi and deputy prime minister of Qatar who will be in the opening tomorrow. So I'm very excited that some stakeholders are really making already pledges towards the outcome of the conference and such incredible efforts will really accelerate the sustainable development in LDCs. So I'm encouraging all of you and all other stakeholders as well to contribute to the LDC 5 by continuing to pledge through the partner to connect and really look forward to working together with all of you to build a better future for all of those people who are living in these countries who really need our support and working together with you towards Doha next year. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Heidi, and not least of the urgent reasons why the many countries you represent must be connected is the climate crisis, which affects many of those countries unusually badly. I'm now very pleased to introduce another one of our hosts in effect, Michael Wilms, who's partner and director of BCG, which is where we're meeting here in New York, to present the launch of the partner to connect action framework. BCG is the knowledge partner of the P2C digital coalition. So Michael. Thank you, David, and we're very happy to host all of you here at the course and also very happy to be the knowledge partner of P2C. So what I wanted to do fairly quickly is run you through the report that will be launched today and what you can find there and which hopefully will help the world to make the pledges that Doreen was asking for as well. So as you know, there's 2.9 people which are still offline in the world today and obviously our key objective is to connect all of them as quickly as we can, but hopefully by 2030 at the latest. We've divided P2C into four main focus area, which is how we organize the whole program, which is around access. How do we connect people everywhere in an affordable way? How do we get them to adopt the Internet and really feel empowered and capable to use the Internet in a safe and secure way and also in a way that creates value for the individuals? How does connectivity provide value to society and how do we create locally also the innovation to ensure that the value is fully captured? And last but not least, how do we accelerate all of that by ensuring that there's more money flowing into these ecosystems so that the investments that are really needed can be made? What we've done with the help of all the focus area leaders and all of the focus area members is create a framework for action around 12 pillars, which make the pledges and the things that need to be done a little bit more actionable than these four areas. So what you can see on the slide now are these 12 pillars sort of given time, I'll not run through every single one in detail, but highlight what you can find in the report that you can find online today. For each of the pillars, there will be a description of what are the key issues that are covered by this pillar, some sense of what is the current state of affairs. Obviously one of the key issues that we're having actually is that there's very little data around the current state of where do we stand on each of these pillars in every single country. And then also a set of ideas around how can we improve and a number of examples of tangible proven interventions that could serve as inspiration for the pledges. Then if you look at the rest of the report, I think the key thing is to, the objective of the report is to help all of you and all of the organizations that can support the digital inclusion effort to identify what are the key issues, what are their potential interventions, and also stimulate thinking with example pledges. And with that, there will also be links to the pledging framework and the pledging tool to ensure that the pledging process is as smooth as possible and that everyone can make the pledges quickly, but specifically also as concrete as possible so that we can help move the needle on the digital divide already in the coming years. David, back to you. Thank you, Michael. And we're now, with having launched the action framework, we're going to move into a presentation of some pledges from four organizations who are all represented here online today. And we're going to start with Andrew Dunnett, who is Group Director for SDGs, Sustainable Business and Foundations at Vodafone. And Andrew is representing Nick Reed, the CEO of Vodafone. Vodafone is leader of Focus Area One of the P2C Coalition. So Andrew. Thank you, David. Thank you, Doreen, for getting us to this key milestone in Partner to Connect journey. It's great to be with you. I bring greetings from Nick, our global CEO, and also from 100,000 colleagues across Vodafone, Safari, Comm, Vodacom, all of whom believe passionately that 4G connectivity can reduce extreme poverty, create jobs, and in particular, boost women's participation in the labor force. The need to connect, as Michael has just put very clearly, the 2.9 billion unconnected people is now absolutely urgent. And for us, one of the most critical barriers facing the unconnected is, of course, mobile internet coverage, particularly in the least developed countries. So in order that we can enable a digital society that is truly accessible to all, today, Vodafone is pledging at least 190 million US dollars over the next five years to increase our 4G population coverage to an additional 80 million people in our sub-Saharan African markets. We will leverage Partner to Connect to develop partnerships to co-invest with us to achieve this goal. And when I saw the film that you showed right at the start, the beautiful film, what really came home to me is the sort of context that we're so familiar with where this sort of work will make such a difference. This investment, of course, includes four of the world's least developed countries. For us, it's about Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania, and DRC. And of course, the pledge is just part of our focus on enabling more of the poorest and hardest to reach communities to access digital society. So thank you for having us. Thank you for letting us go first with the pledge. That's an honor. We're delighted to be part of this partnership and look forward to working with you closely in the days and years to come. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. It's a generous pledge. So glad you went first. Just so you know, for those of you online, the online pledging platform link is in the chat. So please use that, if appropriate. Now it's my honor to introduce Her Excellency Ursula Owusu-Ecofoul, the Minister for Communications and Digitalization in the Government of Ghana, which is a leader in this focus area. And I love that her title even exists, and I'm glad it does in so many countries. Your Excellency, please go ahead. Thank you very much. And it is a pleasure to join you this afternoon to indicate exactly what Ghana intends to do to live up to our commitment to connecting people in every part of our country. Ghana is committing 155 million euros to supplement our universal service funds to boost basic telephony services in rural areas and narrow the digital divide. As part of this project, 2016 cell sites will be built across the country in unserved and underserved communities, and about 3 million Ghanaians who are currently unconnected will be connected by 2023. This is the first phase of a rural telephony and digital inclusion project, and a similar amount will be committed for the second phase, this once this is completed. We also pledge to innovate in our approach to rural telephony and connectivity by providing open access and free spectrum usage, regardless of technology or entity, to enable anyone in any rural locality to use the rural telephony network, which, as I've indicated, will connect 6,000 villages across the country and 3 million Ghanaians by 2023 under our national roaming policy, which we're implementing through partnerships to connect the unconnected and advance the digital development agenda. That's our commitment, and we intend to stick by it. Thank you. Thank you so much, and that is really a wonderful commitment. It's great to see Ghana's leadership in this area. Next, I'm pleased to welcome Narya Santalusia, who is General Manager of Digital Inclusion and U.S. Community Engagement for Microsoft. She is representing Brad Smith, President of Microsoft. So, Narya. Thanks so much, David, and thank you, Doreen and ITU. On behalf of Microsoft and our President, Brad Smith, Leader for Focus Area, two empowering communities, I first want to thank the ITU for this incredible opportunity to partner and participate in the Partners to Connect Digital Coalition. Like the ITU and the Coalition, Microsoft shares the vision that meaningful access is about more than just providing an internet connection. It really encompasses all four elements set out in PTC's focus areas. And we're also really excited to participate in this effort because of the public-private nature of the Coalition and how it is successfully bringing together so many governments and key stakeholders to mobilize resources that will foster meaningful connectivity in the hardest-to-connect communities. Now, Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more and to truly empower communities we know that everyone needs access to the technology, skills, and jobs and livelihood opportunities in an increasingly digital economy. Therefore, today, Microsoft is proud to make our first PTC pledge to help train and certify 10 million people with in-demand digital foundational technical skills by 2025. And specifically, we're looking to focus our efforts on people and communities traditionally excluded by the digital economy and we're especially excited to launch pilot projects and efforts in countries and communities like LDCs and LLDCs that are currently furthest from opportunity. So we look forward to partnering with all of you on this Coalition, as well as really standing alongside people and communities that we're looking to serve so that they can truly be empowered with the digital skills to achieve more. Thank you and back to you, David. Thank you, Naria. And as a longtime tech journalist, I'm not surprised at all that Microsoft is really leading its industry in this area. Now, let me introduce Bjorn Richter, who is head of the digital transformation cluster of global and sector programs GIZ at the government of Germany and his interim focus area three leader of the PTC Coalition. So, Bjorn. Yes. Thank you very much, David. And as always, it's an honor to work with such committed partners like the Ghana, I think, I would say, stars on digital transformation, but also Microsoft and other tech companies. I think it's a privilege to join the partner to connect for us to really have a stakeholder network of its shared vision, achieving the SDGs, but obviously also bringing resources together to bridge the digital divides. So for German Development Corporation, the human centric approach of digital transformation is at the heart of our center of our engagement. So that's why as a colleague of the of the focal area three, we follow basically our passion on digital economy and digital ecosystem support, fostering, for example, through digital transformation centers on Africa and Asia, the ecosystems, but also supporting their data economy and driving the digital public goods shorter. What we are looking to pledge is that we are working together with our colleagues from Estonia at the ITU and the Digital Impact Alliance and obviously experts from the digital ecosystems on the GovStack initiatives. And the colleague from Malawi already showcased that e-government systems are at lack of particular in all the C countries, and we try to develop a common framework and to use interoperable and digital components, so-called digital building blocks on areas like the digital ID, on areas on information exchange, payment gateway, and security. And together with our partners, we pledging to support a digital public goods ecosystem with the specification of 12 ICT building blocks that will reach up to 2 million people in partner countries. We would like to invite interested governments and tech companies to use this open source and open society effort to really come up with a human centric model and a scalable model into the private sector. And we are also thrilled to work together with the Reans team of the ITU on the GovStack initiative with a focus of assisting governments to build particular green digital governments that benefit not only people and their societies, but also the planet. Thank you very much. Looking forward to get the work going. Thank you so much, Bjorn. Really impressive pledges from everyone. I want to again note the online pledging platform. Link is in the chat if anyone wants to go there, and I'd like to turn it back over to Doreen for some thoughts. Thank you. Thank you, David. And thank you to Andrew Tenaria, to Minister Ursula, and to Bjorn. It's a great way to start with such powerful commitments. I have like goosebumps. I'm so excited. We have just heard from organizations and entities. You can make a single pledge. You can make multiple pledges. You can make joint pledges. And of course, you can make pledges that are financially focused. You can make pledges that are policy focused, advocacy focused, and also programmatically focused. I do want to stress that PTC is, we think, much more than a fundraising exercise. We see these financial commitments and pledges as an opportunity to help in terms of infrastructure, getting that infrastructure into the hardest to connect communities. Pledges in terms of policy pledges can also be equally powerful, helping to stimulate organic, sustainable growth in markets through investment friendly regulatory frameworks. Of course, advocacy pledges are also critical that can help to raise awareness about the many benefits of being connected and also help to drive demand in terms of online services that can help to translate into further investment. Programmatic pledges, like in the space of digital skills, can also help to translate into digitally empowered populations with the know how to build compelling new services that actually address the needs of local communities. I think I'd just like to stress time is of the essence and we really do call on all players to step up all players in the ICT ecosystem. Please come forward. Work with us. Work with us with Heidi with Maria Francesca because we do need to connect those 2.9 billion unconnected. And I think that we need action now. So I encourage all of you to come forward. With that, David, I hand the floor back to you. Thank you. Thank you, Doreen. And as a partner of ITU myself, I have to say that I'm deeply impressed with the ITU's approach to partnering and coalition building. It really makes a difference. So that wrapped up the first part of our program. And now we're going to go into a portion where we take a deep dive into focus area two, which is adoption and empowering communities. So we're going to start with a video. Today, 63% of the global population is online. And 95% live within range of a mobile broadband network. However, 2.9 billion people have never used the internet. How can this be? Access and affordability are not the only barriers preventing people from getting online. Skills, digital inclusion and relevant local content and services also matter. The digital skills gap may be faced by women, girls, youth and persons with disabilities is not only creating a huge impediment for these communities to get online, but also an enormous opportunity loss represented by missing economic contributions to the digital economy. Through its four focus areas, the partner to connect digital coalition seeks to drive universal meaningful connectivity and digital transformation globally. By taking a people centered approach, the focus area two of P2C aims to ensure that vulnerable and marginalized groups are digitally skilled and empowered to use digital technologies, content and government services safely, inclusively and equally. Are you ready to help us empower the hardest to connect communities through technology and digital transformation? Join P2C. Be part of this global effort. Pledge for empowering communities or any of the other focus areas of the coalition. Visit www.itu.int slash partner to connect or email us at partner to connect at itu.int. Okay great video. Now let me turn the floor over again to Michael from BCG to present the key issues that are driving change in focus area two. Thank you David. I think it was already mentioned before so that if you look at the LDCs while three quarters of the people are actually covered by a relatively good broadband network, only a quarter of the people are actually using it. I'll tell you what you showed a slide please. And what that means is that in these countries about half of the population is covered but isn't using the internet. And in our assessment that is also shown in the report today there's two key drivers here for that huge gap. One is affordability and the other is adoption. Now obviously adoption is the focus of focus area two. How do we ensure that people feel empowered to use the internet everywhere? And this is particularly true for marginalized groups. If we look at the data women, rural population, disabled people are much less likely to use the internet than other groups. So particularly aiming at those groups what can we actually do? And what we've seen if we can move to the next slide that there's a couple of aspects that we really need to address on this front. First of all there's skill sets. So many of these people have low levels of literacy but then also digital skills. And obviously that's something which has to be addressed and as we just saw for Microsoft there's already this great pledge to help people become much more digitally literate and be able to use the internet in way that is both safe but also adding to their capabilities and their opportunities. Secondly it's all around digital inclusion and focus. How can we get these specific groups online in a better way? How can we address gender inequalities? How can we ensure that also in rural communities these kinds of technologies and skills become much more accessible? What does that mean for educational programs etc etc? And then last but not least how do we ensure that there's actual value for these people in using the internet? And in quite many cases there's no relevant local content or the content is not available in the language that people are speaking. And clearly especially for a lot of the smaller countries or smaller language group ethnic groups this is going to be quite an effort to ensure that there's enough content on the internet, enough services on the internet that make it worth their while to connect. And this is not only a private sector exercise this is also something where government needs to think through what can we do in terms of government services to drive people to feel more use in using connectivity on a daily basis. So if you read through the report there's much more detail in there but what we're hoping to do today is stimulate a discussion around these three areas these three pillars to ensure that we can drive to action in empowering people everywhere quite quickly. Thank you David. Thank you Michael. So now we're going to hear from some of the leaders of Focus Area 2 and unfortunately our first two speakers were unable to be with us today but they have sent a video. The first one will be from Sima Sami Bahoos who is UN Undersecretary General and Executive Director of UN Women International Organization's Leader Focus Area 2 of the PTC Digital Coalition. So let's play the video from Sima Sami Bahoos. Ladies and gentlemen it is a pleasure to join you today to support the partner to connect Digital Coalition on the launch of its Focus Area's Action Framework on Empowering Communities. UN Women is a proud leader of this important work which aligns with the vision laid out by the Generation Equality Movement making sure that women and girls in all their diversity have equal opportunities to safely and meaningfully access, use, lead and design digital technology. Digital connectivity is essential for gender equality. It enables women to access services such as health care and economic and personal development opportunities and to exercise their right to freedom of expression. Within Focus Area 2 we are committed to work across the three key pillars of skills, digital inclusion and relevant local content and services to ensure that all women and girls can be connected. For partners to connect to be a real game changer we must put women and girls at the center of digital development and make their digital inclusion a specific policy objective for governments and the private sector. My message to other leaders is that it is our collective responsibility to spark a fairer and diverse digital transformation. We have seen the power of multi-stakeholder alliances like partners to connect firsthand through the Generation Equality Action Coalition for Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality. It is only by joining forces that we can accelerate action. Dear partners, we are proud to be part of this important collaboration that will give every woman and every girl access to meaningful connectivity and safer digital tools. I thank you. Okay now we have a video from Chat Garcia-Ramillo who is Executive Director for the Association for Progressive Communications known as ATC. He is the, he is a civil society leader for Focus Area 2 of the P2C Digital Coalition so let's roll that video. When we connect villages we empower communities. Connectivity becomes meaningful when communities can use and shape technology to meet their own needs. For over 30 years APC has supported civil society organizations directly providing affordable connectivity worldwide. This is why we joined the P2C Coalition. Presently we support 30 initiatives in 16 countries extending connectivity in hard to reach rural areas. This collective effort started in 2017 in partnership with civil society and community organizations, regulatory bodies and the governments of Sweden, Canada and the United Kingdom. APC's approach addresses factors that limit connectivity in villages. First we work with communities to set up and manage communication infrastructure using open source and low-cost networking technologies. Second we help increase awareness and knowledge of the benefits and adoption of digital technologies with a gender and human rights based approach. Third we foster enabling policy and regulatory environments including advocating for community network licenses. All our initiatives address the three pillars identified by the P2C Coalition. Skills, digital inclusion and local content and services. This year we are pioneering the schools of community networks to train and mentor over a hundred village technicians including many women to set up their own networks in Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa. In Indonesia communities in eight provinces are exploring local appropriations of internet connectivity and platforms in fishing and agriculture. In Kenya community-based organizations have found common grounds for technical and content creation collaboration. In Brazil the Amazon community network school started with a visit in the indigenous village of Solemau and will include six more communities in three states. The digital divide is a persistent problem that demands innovative and bold solutions. Our message to the P2C Coalition is innovative community-centered access models will complement existing commercial efforts to provide meaningful universal connectivity. Our pledge should be to empower communities directly affected by the problem so they become part of the solution. Okay great now we are going to have a little more of an interactive portion of the program. We're going to go through the three core pillars of Focus Area 3. Skills, digital inclusion and relevant local content and services and we're going to have a poll at the beginning of each section for you all to answer. Those of you here in the room are a little impaired unless you happen to also be on the Zoom and then we'll have a discussion with sector experts. So the first section is skills and we have a poll. So the question is what figure do you think comes closer to the digital skills level in most of the least developed countries? A less than five percent, B five to 25 percent, C 25 to 50 percent, D 50 to 75 percent or E I don't know. So yes can we vote? No I don't know. We can't vote. Okay we can't vote but take a quick second to tell us what you think that comes closest to the digital skills level in least developed countries and I don't know how long it will take to get an answer but yeah okay and how many here in the room think the answer is A less than five percent? How many think it's five to 25 percent? Okay how many think it's 25 to 50 percent? I don't think too many people think it's 50 to 75 or above or and don't know forget about that. All right so can we have the answer on the screen is that okay oh that's interesting okay so in reality this is good many of you thought five to 25 however the answer is below five percent and the reason is that to just to start in these in these the countries in general only 65 percent of adults are literate so that is a key gating factor right there so 35 percent of the adult population is already excluded of those who are literate less have digital literacy and basic digital skills which is why the number is so low so clearly this is a key challenge. Now let me go to three really great speakers and I'm going to start with Sinead Bovel who's founder of Way and member of the ITU Generation Connect Visionaries Board and a youth leader of Focus Area 2 of the PDC Digital Coalition so welcome Sinead and I'd like you to address two questions what is your organization doing to address the digital skills gap and how can we increase in demand how can we sorry how can we increase demand and motivate people to adopt digital skills. Great thank you so much for having me it has been such an energizing and motivating conversation here today so I'm really thankful to be here so when it comes to addressing the digital skills gap we we take a three-pronged approach I'd say to addressing this gap and you know the first is through our skills our digital skills curriculum so systematically mapping out what digital skills are foundational for the future and what's the best framework to teach and build each skill across our communities you know a big portion of this framework it's based on uncovering how each skill is relevant to our community's needs for instance connecting these skills to employment or learning opportunities and second we strategically position ourselves in the locations that are relevant to our target communities so our organization works predominantly with Gen Z and Millennials so we share a lot of our skill building content on social media and through other virtual spaces you know at college and high school campuses so being present in these spaces where our community already is it really helps to minimize the barriers to learning and it also forces us to localize our curriculums to match you know the communication ecosystems of each market for example short-form video content or longer-form traditional Blackboard learning depending on where we are and then we also tap into our making our content shareable in peer-to-peer learning so education isn't just moving in one direction but it's kick-starting this peer-to-peer ecosystem and then finally we make sure our learning ecosystems are very inclusive such as hosting specific sessions for women and girls and people of color traditionally marginalized groups and in digital ecosystems and then when it comes to increasing demand to motivate people to adopt these skills you know two core pillars in the empowering community's framework are our digital inclusion and relevant local content and I think mastering these two pillars are absolutely vital prerequisites for motivating and encouraging demand for Gen Z and Millennials for example that have the privilege of being connected a core driver of our online community or online activity comes from the relevance of the content and opportunities and engagement we get access to in these online forums from employment opportunities to learning to social ecosystems we're incredibly motivated to participate in these online spaces and to equip ourselves with skills to access these spaces because of the value these online worlds add to our lives so we need to ensure that this value added content and opportunities are replicated and available across all communities across the world so this of course does mean relevant content is available in multiple languages and that the content is localized but as a millennial I would say that giving people the opportunity to create their own content locally and build digital ecosystems relevant to their own communities is vital and then when it comes to to digital inclusion addressing the inclusionary roadblocks to building digital skills is also very important for example we know that access to the internet and digital technologies it isn't gender neutral and there are communities with auditory or visual challenges and so on so we need to carve out our digital skills frameworks to specifically address the needs of marginalized communities on the path to bridging the skills get more broadly thanks so much thank you Sinead just want to quickly comment we've got about half an hour left we have seven speakers and two more polls so all the speakers would just keep that in mind we are a little bit behind but we are sure going to be done at 1030 so let me now bring back Narya Santalusia from Microsoft who is responsible for digital inclusion so Narya please wow first of all I want to say I got the poll wrong so it said panelists can't vote but you know I'm terrified to admit that but I saw you Dorian so I don't feel as bad we'll be in it together and Sinead I just want to say you're amazing but Sinead you're you're truly amazing and I just want to say plus 1000 to everything Sinead said and you know kind of drop the mic there just a couple of really quick themes like that we're you know obviously singing from the same songbook and using the same playbook but one of the like the four things that we really focus on with our digital skills programs are at first to look at leverage data so we and we really do believe that the kind of value at that Microsoft can bring to the table is that data on like both the supply side and the demand side but really what are the jobs what are the livelihood opportunities then building out the content to make sure that the individuals who learn can kind of align to the roles that are in demand and then of course signaling that learning acquisition with the certification so that people can walk away and say hey world I have these skills and then finally that last mile connection to the livelihood opportunity and it's that whole value chain that we're trying to look at not only to solve for and to provide you know content for but also really to partner with our nonprofits to make sure that they take that local approach and have the investment that they need to be able to kind of make sure that all four of those pillars kind of come to life so that's definitely the way that we approach our skills programming and kind of how we're also anchoring our pledge of course I was really thinking a lot about what are the conditions to really help individuals to continue to learn you know because it can be really challenging especially when you have not been connected before don't have any of those digital skills and it's really again similar to what Sinead was mentioning but how do you think about you know showing people the end goal that in the end there is this opportunity if you look at jobs and livelihoods today almost everyone is tech enabled so really if you're going to have a participation in the digital economy you know you need to have these skills so that's kind of one of the things to say not only is that end goal available to you but you can do it the second piece really is similar like localization of content meeting learners where they are one of the things that we tried to do was have done in the past was one size fits all you know any learner can join and then finish and be done but really we found like there are on ramps and off ramps and how do you become really intentional to meet learners so that they can get on learn if they want you know take a pause because they need to take a break you know do other commitments in life and then come back and then keep going so how do you really build that kind of connected pathway and then finally it's so funny because I always get asked like what is the key digital skill that you need you know for Microsoft and honestly I think that the the key skill is really resilience and and those soft skills rather than the digital skills because the only thing that we know is that skills will continue to evolve 40 percent of current employers say that they their workforce needs new skills in the next six months so the only consistent thing has changed and so how can we make sure that people have the ability to really learn new skills connect with lifelong learning have a growth mindset and keep going so just a couple of thoughts and again thank you so much for the opportunity thank you Narya next I let me introduce Mikaela Sanchez Malcolm who is secretary of public innovation of the chief of cabinet of ministers in the government of Argentina so very pleased to have Mikaela with us and please answer these two questions what are you what what are what is government of Argentina doing to address the digital skills gap and how can we make people want these skills okay hello thank you good morning and good afternoon to everyone it's really pleasure to be here and I would like to send what you for invite me to participate in this very important web dialogue in the context of course of partner to the next initiative um these interaction spaces are the ones that allow us to progress so are more inclusive and sustainable digitally in transformation for all okay so as the COVID-19 pandemic certainly demonstrated both access and effective use of digital technologies are essential now more than ever uh more our initiatives based on color collaborative work and multi stakeholder approach have the unique potential to make a real impact connect to this connect and reach the multiplicity of digital dividers the digital skills gap reminds especially in developing countries a significant obstacle towards a real digital inclusion and additionally this gap affects certain groups more than other such as women the elder people and people with disabilities and now I'm talking about Argentina and that's what that is why in Argentina digital inclusion policies are crucial and follow a cross cutting approach these initiatives and the quiet equipment and empowering of the channel population will at the same time target in particularly vulnerable groups more than 10 years ago we started the program punto digital it's a really important program for us and right now we have more than 600 physical spaces throughout the country which are equipped and connected to the internet these spaces provide free access to information and communication technologies and its objective is to reduce the digital divide by providing access promoting digital skills and contributing to shop training these spaces are equipped with computers TVs and technology to serve as training working and entertainment environments this program relates to the challenge of limited access to training infrastructure and opportunities the state in the focus areas action framework report Argentina territory is among the largest in the world it's divided into 24 provinces we have more than 2300 local governments and the program punto digital it's a federal initiative enabled by the articulation between national and local governments the principal aspect of this program is that allow us to reach numerous remote areas of our country some digital points are perhaps the only cinema available in town but in other cases it's the place where boys and girls participate in international and game shams or where workshops are held so it's really important for us this program is also complemented by a virtual learning platforms that offers more than 100 free training sessions on digital inclusion citizenship and labor rights and skills and these courses can be done completely online more than 200 000 people participate last year in our digital points and our digital program as I mentioned before our policies are also acknowledged that the gaps in access and use of technology are summed to pre-existing gaps such as geographic age socioeconomic and of course gender gaps and that is why we also created the center of shenders in technology this policy aims to reach in one of these gaps gender inequality a key issue identified by the report through implementing a policy to enable equitable access such initiative relates not only to the pillar of skills of this focus area but also to ensuring digital inclusion as the compiler that we are addressing today the center is a space that promotes courses training and also scholarships so there are more women and diversities can learn about the STEM world and be part of it and we are doing this to public private collaboration with the main companies in the city sector around the world many of them as Microsoft are present on this panel and and I take this opportunity to thank them our belief that collaborative work is fundamental to bridge the existing gender gap uh regarding the second question I don't want to take much of your time uh adoption of these skills not only depends on having the necessary physical infrastructure to connect to the internet or being able to access training and courses on ACT skills it also relies upon being motivated to effectively appropriate technology we can increase motivation by offering concrete practical and available solutions for everyone and by creating conditions of equality in regard to access to the tech sector and related working opportunities um measurement as mentioned in the focus area action framework report it's a very relevant however it's also fundamental that content related to many digital gaps that exist if you are developed this is what um we do the platform and through the center to visualize teach careers and show women positions these are just a few and and possible tools to encourage the adoption of digital skills by everyone I'm really looking forward more insightful discussion on this panel to discuss ways and solutions to bridge the digital gaps in our societies thank you all thank you Michaela thank you so much okay now we're going to move to the second core pillar which is digital inclusion and we are again going to start with a poll and lucky for you all there's no right answer so the question is what do you think is the main reason driving someone to connect to the internet for the first time in for a to communicate and connect with people to play to learn or search for information to trade to work or look for a job or something else so pick one of those and while we're having that for our several hundred online participants let me just ask those of you in the room um what in your opinion is the single biggest reason that drives someone to connect to the internet for the first time a is to communicate and connect with people how many would say that okay quite a few of you b is to play how about that probably not the main reason okay c to learn or search for information I might say that myself actually um to trade or to work or look for a job well all of these are important obviously let's see what we've got from the poll results can we get those up communicate connect with people number one by far yes I think we were all in agreement so you were right you got it it's done okay so uh now let me introduce uh sophia sadik who is generation connect youth envoy and I want to ask sophia how can we ensure that people who connect are gonna stay safe online and what do you think and do you think governments really want to include people in the digital society so sophia go right ahead thank you so much david I think this is the first time someone has tried to pronounce my name and god that's it it writes um immediately hey thank you so that is good um hello everyone my name is Sophia I am representing the ITU Generations Connect team if you don't know what Generations Connect is please check it out um the first thing I do want to highlight I want to tell a bit of a story to answer your second question on whether government want to create an inclusive space and I was very particular about the pledge that Microsoft was going to play was going to make because um I in my own personal community I live in Nigeria and I occasionally bring this group of girls together to teach them about STEM education now one of our greatest problems is the lack of resources right the knowledge I am the teacher some of my friends are these teachers we don't know a lot about STEM when we went online to search for new information the Microsoft Hack in STEM curriculum was actually what we use to teach most of the girls so thank you nara for that thank you Microsoft for that here's where the challenge was we had the curriculum but we didn't have all the materials and so in trying to get majority of the materials um it was impossible because some of them had to be purchased from the US and to get products from the US in Nigeria is very difficult the government doesn't support you and cost them just like absolutely not in supportive you bringing um such products that to the country um so it's not just really about always looking at um connectivity and all that stuff but also what are the circumstances around that right and what is the government's doing to ensure that young people like myself and my friends who really want to help other young people like us you know who grew up in difficult communities in difficult backgrounds and not constantly facing roadblocks and problems when it comes to helping other people you want to get materials government says hey we're not going to sanction that you know you want to buy stuff that people are going to use and governments are like yeah we're not approving that payment and it is just absolutely frustrating right you want to pay for something it's not going through so looking into laws and policies like that that continues to stop young people from being able to help their own communities I think that is one way that government officials really need to start thinking about creating an inclusive system another thing is looking to the education system there is one joke that I like to make is years ago um I didn't have like we didn't have this kind of phones right but we have this now but we're still getting taught the same way like my great great grandfather went to school we go to school you sit you sit in the classroom there's a board in front of you and this is like the way for many many many many years and there's absolutely no kind of change into the way we are educating people right so I think that especially for developing communities the curriculum need to be very technology heavy because we're really not focusing on the skills and the knowledge that young people really need to thrive given today's global ecosystem given to this global village I personally went to school to study computer science I spent five years in the university and not one day did we have a computer to write a line of code so every time I looked around I would try to teach this about programming and code he would write it on a whiteboard I don't know how you program codes on a whiteboard but I spent five years in school doing that and there are no policies or laws in place ensuring that these systems do not continue there are no policies or laws in place ensuring that we are not still teaching and learning the way we did 1 000 years ago so we really need to change the education system we really need to revolutionize how young people are learning and ensure that that knowledge is very technology focused because it is the future and talking about safe internet it also highly depends on how we bring people into the interest I remember when I was young there was such a rave about being on to go to go as a social network then everybody wanted to be there everybody wanted to have like to go groups everybody wanted to talk to their friends that was how we were introduced to the internet and so we got into rooms where people were mostly important mostly talking about things that shouldn't be talked about but if we were in communities where people came to us you know to talk about how to learn online how to access information how to research about your career I know that I would go on to the internet to learn about things like that right and not to try to be part of like private social media networks and all that stuff so really how we introduce technology to young people is really an important factor of how we keep them safe online um I would also just say that it's really important for corporations like Microsoft and Vodafone to continue to do campaigns that preach about safe tips so that even people who would not see like an online campaign can see something offline teaching them about how they can be safe on the internet how you can protect your password how you can protect your kids from the internet and things like that because I want to say personally my parents didn't give me a phone until I got to the university because they were just worried I missed out on a lot of opportunities that shouldn't have been so if they're just you know been properly groomed about how what it took for them to allow their own child to be on the internet it had like it's good a good side because I wasn't in a to-go group but hey the bad side is I didn't miss out on a lot of opportunity thank you thank you once again and thank you Naira to you and the entire team of Microsoft I just want to say that they're like 50 plus girls who are now pursuing STEM careers because we have that hack in STEM curriculum to teach them thank you everyone well thank you Sophia you show why we need to have youth involved in younger people you're not really a youth but young people involved because the passion and the honesty is really different we need that so please let me now introduce Ajmal A. Awan who is member of the Internet of International Coordination in the Ministry of Information and Technology and Telecommunication of Pakistan so Ajmal tell us how you think we can ensure that people will have a safe experience online and are governments doing enough thank you very much for giving me the opportunity and great to see all the leaders and Doreen in this event first of all partner to connect digital coalition that Mr. Doreen calls the game-changing opportunity I would say it's really game-changing for Pakistan the way things are happening and the way the ICT progress is happening in the country access and connectivity is the first pillar of the digital Pakistan vision of the prime minister of minister of Pakistan the remaining four pillars are digital infrastructure e-governance digital skilling and literacy innovation and entrepreneurship our ministry of information technology and telecommunication issued cyber security policy setting the boundaries for the safe internet which relates to the question you asked we also issued personal data protection policy and we are working on digital Pakistan policy we also issued the right of way policy and we are working on cloud first policy so a lot of policies are issued and we're making sure the use of internet is safer for the community now answering the second question Pakistan has huge emphasis on digital inclusion and taking digital services to the rural services rural areas so to have this you know connectivity to the remote areas we set up an entity called universal service fund usf that focuses on connectivity in the unserved and underserved areas through the robust mechanism of the universal service fund in Pakistan more than 8,500 kilometer of optical fiber has been laid in the unserved and underserved areas of the country also more than 12,800 villages have been covered through the usf and approximately 500,000 broadband connections have been provided so i'm talking about unserved and underserved areas because in the main areas there are telecom operators who do provide their services already we started as a as a government we started digi skills program and that is particularly focused on free trainings for youth girls and boys and with the right policies of Pakistan the Pakistan export in the IT services have grown by 47 percent compared to last year Pakistan has been declared the second largest freelancers community and fourth largest in outsourcing in as the outsourcing destination towards the end I would say I really appreciate working with the ITU we had a great support for girls in ICT and we are looking forward to work on digital inclusion especially that of persons with disability I myself work is the chairperson for the national ICT council for persons with disabilities and we work with the people with the hearing impairment and the visual impairment and the physical disabilities and autism so I bring the people are bring the right communities and we are working on you know talking softwares and we are working on assistive technologies digital transformation center girls in ICT giga project of ITU and we are working on child online protection initiative and I must acknowledge it was a great support from the region and from obviously the leadership of the secretary general and Doreen this is the person I would like to mention Dr. Ismail and Arsuko they are supporting us so we are working on another initiative which is the smart village pilot project bringing connectivity gender man-streaming and digital inclusion to the rural population and this is very high importance initiative once again thank you very much ITU for your support and collaboration. Thank you so much Ismail it's really impressive to me all these to hear so many countries doing so much that we're really great to hear what Pakistan is up to I want to just again say to our remaining speakers be conscious we are short on time Nisrim Dib is executive director of the Lebanese league for women in business and co-founder of girls got IT girls got it Lebanon which was an equals in tech awards finalist 2021 so congratulations for that and welcome to Sreen so tell us how can we connect those how can we ensure those who connect will have a safe experience in his government doing enough. Hello thank you everyone for this opportunity so first thank you for the internet and thank you I'm very thankful for having the internet the connectivity and the infrastructure to be connected to you and I feel like I'm in New York right now so thank you again but unfortunately many of the girls and the women in my country Lebanon they don't have this opportunity that I'm having right now and this is our mission and my mission personally so this is Nisrim Dib before being the executive director allow me please David before being the executive director of the Lebanese league for women in business before being the co-founder of girls that IT I was the only female in class studying computer science and that's what drove me to be here right now with you I was the only female in class I was labeled as a woman was going to study computer science and being and having those sick glasses after studying computer science and now after 15 years in the ICT sector and after co-founding a lot of initiatives I'm with you without those glasses so again many of the women in my country they don't have access to the internet before talking about safe access I want to mention that at some point in my life and in your life we didn't have the opportunity to get access to the internet first and second to not have to the know the know how to access a safe internet so we got had at some point in our lives through MSN or or the other emails and other platforms so we need a lot to do we need a lot of work to be done but we are advancing in this again I'm coming from the Middle East from a country that suffered a lot in the last two years especially on the corruption side on the financial crisis on much more a lot yet what we're able to achieve is to reach more than 3,500 school students and to teach them the basics of STEAM skills science technology engineering arts and mathematics to partner with a lot of initiative we I have personally I have won a lot of funds as a social entrepreneur with the US department of state to represent sorry to represent Lebanon in many initiative of this is one of the funny moments during the last years new unmute so again yeah we represented our country in many of the initiative we partnered with international organization to provide access to the internet and to the ICT to our women and the girls in Lebanon another thing to say what we need we need awareness we need to good awareness sessions and training to the youth and this can be done all online we need to provide them with infrastructure needed we need to provide them with internet access I'm talking especially about Lebanon what my government is doing unfortunately you are asking a person coming from a very corrupted government they're doing some of the initiatives but we still need a lot to do so what we need to do we are doing it as CSOs as Lebanese uh-oh did we lose Ms. Rene we've got a frozen screen there can you hear us Ms. Rene this is on a personal level as a department of state and this is to teach the youth about the about the initiatives and the latest technology actually about the cyber as soon as you started criticizing the government we're sort of having trouble we lost this Rene entirely I'm afraid with her great passion it was wonderful hearing that hello can you hear me yeah we got you now but we're sort of having a little trouble can we can you try it again up we can see you now okay try it out hello can you hear me yep yes now we got you yes we do sorry this is one example of what we are facing in Lebanon the internet got cut the electricity has cut so I had to connect to my G again thank you everyone and thank you for this opportunity we need a lot and not to forget that all of what has been done in Lebanon is because we partnered so we partnered to connect and we need to gather all efforts to make internet and connectivity accessible to everyone in the world thank you so much thank you Ms. Rene and thank you for your partnership with with ITU so now we're going to go to the third pillar relevant local content and services and we are really quite short on time but we're going to keep forging ahead so we got a quick poll which I didn't get told not to ask all right so in my what's that leadership over here when you first connected to the internet you're this is for you to answer about yourself were you searching for content in your own language yes or no let's see those in the room how many of you were all searching for content in your own language I think the chances are very high that we're all going to raise our hands here but maybe maybe not let's see for our several hundred international participants there may be some probably are some and that's one of the key issues I would think the multi language and the internet of course is so heavily dominated by English we know that so can we get the answer because those are pretty simple poll okay well that's really amazing with the people online half of them were not looking for content in their own language that just shows how presumptuous I am as an American I didn't you didn't either yeah Michael was one of those who answered no okay so now we're trying to move forward so I'm going now introduce Carlos Ray Moreno who is co-lead of local networks policy and strategy for the Association for Progressive Communications he's representing chat Garcia Ramilo so Carlos what do you think is the best way to foster the creation of local content and who should do that thanks David and thank you the ITU for for us for APC as Chad has mentioned is we are very proud of being part of this coalition and let me first recognize how important is that relevant local content and services is one of the pillars of the framework is is actually critical as everyone is is mentioning no as per your questions as Chad has mentioned her video our experience has shown that these and any other solution entails empowering communities that are directly affected by the problem so they become part of the solution and sorry and and this doesn't only relate to building the physical network infrastructure but also around creating their own local content there is there is a very long tradition on around community media and communications with community radios leading on that front and now with the internet we have the opportunity to go beyond that and bridge the oral and digital cultures at the at the community level at many of those rural and remote areas that remain unconnected on the very same word that Chad mentions with the 13 initiatives in 16 countries in the global south that APC supporting we are realizing that several of the barriers of the usage gap that Haiti and others have been referring to are tackled when communities create their own solutions to address their needs for one meaningfulness the content is directly contextualized to the local needs and the challenges which is critical to relevance in addition although there is a lot of real of emphasis on access to information a lot of the meaningfulness that we are finding is around preservation of knowledge and heritage as well also around skills content is made available in many cases be via audio or video format which increases the user base as people especially the elderly can interact with the content with the content without needing to know how to read or write we also have something to say about affordability because going beyond local content creation and make making content available locally reduces the cost of using it as no internet connection is required high internet cost really strangles the potential for local content creation but also around the gender gap we are finding that there is higher participation of women than men in local content creation for instance in one initiative in India local content creation by women has even led to understanding of an overcoming some of the barriers they face in accessing the internet so in summary and not to take more time of the session real and local content and services are critical to close the digital divide and the best way to make them available is to empower the community's lacking meaningful access to create the content and the services they consider important to themselves so thank you very much again for the opportunity thank you so much Carlos and now our final speaker John Jack who's deputy CIO in the prime minister's office in Vanuatu and we are especially grateful for him to be coming to us very very late I don't know what time is it there John it's exactly 1 30 in the morning well thank you for doing this at that hour we really appreciate it so tell us in your view what's the best way to help foster the creation of local content and who should be leading that effort and thank you again for being here no thank you thank you very much David and everyone for having me here at P2C this is a great space for this discussion let me start off by saying that you know every community has different needs and different opportunities for service high impact projects begin with a community assessment with active involvement and commitment from community members if your assessment reveals economic and community development needs they likely fall into one or more of the following categories youth employment obstacles to entrepreneurship barriers to agricultural opportunities and livelihood lack of resource to address economic empowerment now Smart Islands program in Vanuatu is an innovative approach to deliver connectivity and an integrated shoot of scalable and sustainable services to disadvantaged island communities that leverages interoperability multifunctionality and reuse of ICT infrastructures the Blue Reliability Study reports presents the underground experience of essential services and importantly the daily challenges that the people of the area faced on daily basis that's as high cost of transportation inability to understand the agricultural tourism potential lack of skills unreliable power supply in servicing access to education health cabinets and finance service amongst others so if we can touch the heart of the people in the community including those with special skills and other vulnerable groups they get the buy-in and support initiatives that will in turn empower them and then the focus of local content creation is underway without much hesitation as the community takes ownership now to the question of leadership of such transformation we need to ensure that we have good leaders who are characterized by the ability to empower the communities to achieve maximum success it is important to think through what empowerment means and our best to employ it so we can harness the strength of such transformation the national ICT Development Committee of Vanuatu has recently approved to best show the Smart Islands program while stakeholders from government as well as citizens have indicated keen interest at the IS level the Council of Ministers of the Vanuatu government endorsed the decision of the National ICT Development Committee interests were also received from partners such as the Vanuatu Rural Electrification Project financially supported by the World Bank expressed the interest on how projects would stimulate demand for solar power grid to be erected in the area or other forms of renewable energy at the electoral constituency level members of parliament of the Malakula constituency supported the Smart Island program this then translates to the provincial government of Malamba of which Malakula Island is part of from the provincial government level to the area council and to the chiefs of the community the governance system of Vanuatu and its cultural space the chiefs as the leaders in the community the island community formed a Smart Island committee that has representatives from all villages who volunteered and voted to take lead in the ground the ground activities thank you to ITU through the Bangkok Regional Office for its continued support including development partners and we look forward to support from other potential support so for the transformation to okay it has to be done in an holistic approach therefore getting the support from all sectors of the governance structure spreads out the responsibilities across the sector it should not be only one person or one group's responsibility everyone has a bit to play and in that way everyone feels ownership of the transformation I thank you for having me thank you very much thank you so much John and again thank you for staying up to do that let me turn it over to Doreen for some closing comments thank you thank you David what a terrific conversation we have had here this morning in New York I see from the online participants we've had representation from all corners of the globe which is just terrific a special thanks to our pledgers thank you for us stepping up today a special thanks also to our speakers to our amazing moderator David to our host Michael thank you thank you we also had quite an active discussion in the chat I wish we had more time for Q&A perhaps next time I think we saw very clearly through our discussion today that the importance of of meaningful connectivity of connecting everyone is absolutely critical especially for the future of vulnerable groups especially for marginalized communities I think as as Maria Francesca mentioned in the beginning we have made some progress but we have much more to do so we have to keep the pressure on and I think having this P2C effort is going to help us to keep that that pressure on we need to take that human-centered approach we need to be community focused I think that's another critical piece that was brought forward of course the skilling piece the re-skilling being being critical the resilience as as Naria mentioned I think that was another important point security content creation these are all things that we have to keep in mind as it is CSW this week I want to also focus on digital connectivity as essential for gender equality I think that also came across it's our collective responsibility to spark a fairer and more diverse digital transformation as we heard from the UN Women Executive Director we do have to think about the way that we engage and try to train and educate young people I think Sophia's point about transforming education is a good one that we can perhaps share with our friends leading the transforming education summit that will take place in in September so today as I said in the beginning is an important day because it marks the launch of our action framework the launch of our pledging platform this is the beginning of more to come so I invite you to join us on the 20th of April as we'll go into the next focus area which is the value creation building digital ecosystems the 11th of May we'll dive into the fourth piece which is the incentivizing investment so please do join us for that piece as well the 2nd of June kicks off our youth summit our Generation Connect youth summit in in Kigali in Rwanda our development conference kicks off on the 6th and of course our P2C high-level roundtable series starts on the 7th of June in Kigali Rwanda so please do join us stay tuned make your pledges we have more exciting pledges coming up on the 20th of April I'm really excited to to see much more so thank you for being here again thank you thank you Michael thank you David and I hand back to you David to close us off thank you I think you've done a great job of closing and I just thank you Doreen for the great work your team and you have done and really the incredible energy of the participants from all over the world today was really striking I think if anything the energy around this issue has grown and I hope we all keep really putting our shoulders to the wheel and and make it happen faster so thank you everybody thank you the ITU thank you Doreen and have a great day wherever in the world or evening or morning wherever you are hi thank you bye oh hi thank you bye thank you bye