 Dear participants, we are ready to start. David is on you. Thank you so much. Welcome, everyone. My name is David Kirkpatrick. I am very eager to welcome you to the Connect to Include, Include to Connect session, which, as you probably know, is the second stop on the Road to Addis series of events, which will lead up to the World Telecommunication Development Conference WTDC 2021 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this coming November. This session is very much about the people of the world and how they will participate and need to participate and can participate in the globally connected society. And it really is a way of really helping us better understand the human side of the ITU, which we often think of as very much about speeds and speeds and different kinds of phones and networks, et cetera. But here we're talking about people and how they can be included. So as I said, my name is David Kirkpatrick. I'm a journalist based in New York. I run a company called Techonomy, which puts on conferences. And I'm very proud to be working very closely with the ITU, which I'm a very strong supporter of on this series of events. So I'd like to tell you a few things about the technical details of today's session, because it will take just a little bit of understanding. It's entirely remote, as we all know. We're living remote. It's webcasted, live streamed, and recorded. As a participant, you are free to use the chat during the session at any time for any comments you have. Questions that are addressed to speakers should be inserted in the Q&A function. And if time allows, we will address some of these questions. You can upvote a question by clicking the thumbs up icon next to a question. And Zoom will automatically sort them by the number of upvotes. During the session, we also will prove writing captioning services so that you can activate by clicking on closed caption in the bottom bar of the Zoom interface. So you should see closed caption as an option there, and you can read that if you'd like to. We also will be providing interpretation in Arabic, English, French, Russian, Chinese, and Spanish. And as you can see, international sign language. The sign language interpreters will be on screen throughout the session. To listen to the available interpretation channels, please click on Interpretation at the bottom right on the Zoom interface bar at the bottom and select the language you'd like to hear. If you want to hear the original audio, you can select Off in the Interpretation menu. Off simply means floor, as if you were sitting in the room with the speakers. Participants in a language channel will hear the translated audio and also the original audio at a lower volume. To hear only the interpreted language, click Mute Original Audio. So there are the housekeeping points. Now, I'm very eager to introduce our incredible group of speakers today, especially our featured keynote speaker, her Excellency Ms. Saleh Wurzudeh, President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. We're very pleased to have her joining us. In addition, our speakers will be Atman Al Moavar, the Research Lead at the MISC Foundation, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, the Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, Monica Duham, CEO of Hear Colors, Professor Anthony Giannumis, who's Associate Professor of Universal Design of Information and Communication Technology at Oslo Metropolitan University, Lizette Gonzalez Romero, from the Telecommunications Indigenous Communities of Mexico, Claudia Gordon, Director of Government and Compliance with T-Mobile Accessibility, Michael Hoden, who is CEO of the Global Coalition on Aging, Fumzile Mlambo Nkuka, the United Nations Undersecretary General and Executive Director of UN Women. Very pleased to have her with us. Joanne O'Reardon, Activist and Sports Journalist, Emile Se Portillo from Conitel in Paraguay, Emma Randall, who's a Youth Engagement Representative at the ITU, Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications, Roland White, Director for Global Diversity and Inclusion at Microsoft, Judith Williams, whose head of People Sustainability and a Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at SAP. And finally, Jim Rogers, our graphic designer and illustrator for the Road to Addis events. Jim will be composing a graphic illustration of the discussion today, and we will rejoin him at the end and he will show us the image that he has done throughout this session, which will illustrate as much as possible of all the wonderful things you are about to hear. So now let me pass the floor to my co-moderator, Sango. Thank you, David. Hi, everyone, I'm Sango and I'm the Child Online Protection mascot. I keep children safe online. Now I would like you to meet Danola, our Youth Community Leader. Hi, Danola, what are you up to? Hello, Sango, hello, everyone. I'm Danola and I work with the Generation Connect community, which is basically the ITE's work with young people. So if you have any questions or any comments during the session, please use hashtag Road to Addis and hashtag ITWTDC on your tweets. And also you can feel free to add the generation hashtag. Thank you over to you, David and Sango. Thank you, Sango and Danola. And now it's my pleasure to give the floor to Doreen Bogdan-Martin for her opening remarks. Take it away, Doreen. Thank you, David. So good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone, and welcome to Connect to Include, Include to Connect. Our next stop on the Road to Addis and really happy that our discussion today is part of the Commission on the Status of Women. It's also part of the WISIS Forum 2021. Today's theme is digital inclusion and I think it could hardly be more timely. Our post-COVID world, in our post-COVID world, digital exclusion increasingly means economic exclusion. It means social exclusion. It means educational exclusion and exclusion from a whole raft of new opportunities that those of us that are already connected take for granted. Digital exclusion particularly affects rural and remote dwellers and also impacts certain demographics more than others. In our session today, we're gonna look at strategies to drive the digital inclusion, not only of women and girls and young people, but also of other marginalized groups like the elderly, persons with disabilities, children, Indigenous groups and people living in remote areas. So what concrete actions are needed to ensure inclusive equal access and use of ICTs for all? Which countries, private sector companies and international organizations are leading the way? What types of partnerships and global cooperation efforts are proving most effective? We have an exceptional panel of experts as you've just heard from David and I'm really looking forward to hearing your views. We also have this great representation of youth groups following the discussion. And today we're launching our Generation Connect Visionaries Board, which is our new youth consultation committee. This new board comprises eight competitively recruited youth experts and eight high level appointees that are gonna help us to provide strategic guidance to ITU and to ensure that we champion the voice of youth to advance digital development. Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, WTDC will be hosted in Addis Ababa as David just mentioned. And it is therefore my great pleasure and my honor to invite the Honorable President of Ethiopia, Her Excellency, Madam Sahele Workswede to address us today. Madam President, I give you the floor. Over to you. Thank you so very much. It's a pleasure to see many friends in this call and I would like to greet you.