 So let us begin and hopefully more participants will come in, but let us begin. We're a small and powerful group here today. This is the second speaker series. And we're really thankful that you're here with us. It will be very interesting and I think very helpful in terms of, you know, understanding, learning about how the work world is really, I think, evolving around the SDGs. And we have two different speakers who will speak about, you know, their own work and their own experiences and how the SDGs are integrated into what they do. And some of the things that you can do to sort of get ready for it. If you're, I mean, most of you are in graduate schools already learning about the SDGs. But this will be really lots of tips and ideas. So the first speaker we have is going to be Mrs. Soraya. She is the vice president of and strategy and of engagement at to you. She is a graduate undergraduate at University of Cape Town and political science and philosophy in in South Africa, of course, and she also has an executive leadership sort of honors certificate from the Gordon Institute of business science and I am assuming also in Cape Town, South Africa. But she, you know, she will tell you about herself a little bit more about herself and her work. And you'll learn a lot about, you know, how she's gotten to where she's gotten through her education experiences her work experiences and etc. So, without much ado, let us begin. I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Hamdele. Thank you very much, Lucia, and it's really nice to be here this afternoon. Thank you very much for having me. I want to correct that I have a degree in law as well from the University of Cape Town, and my postgraduate honors is from the University of Pretoria Gordon Institute of business science based in Pretoria. As Lucia has already mentioned, my name is Siraya Hamdele. I am the vice president of strategy and engagement at to you, it is based in Cape Town, South Africa. My experience in sustainability spans 20 years across a number of sectors. But what I know for sure about this work is that it is extremely fulfilling. As part of my career in the public sector. My sustainable development highlights include working on a major law reform project, as we transitioned as government from a nature conservation mindset to sustainable development practice. I transitioned from sustainable development policy as well as climate change policy and climate change development, as well as advocating for more sustainable development integration in the public sector, especially as it related to decision making. I moved out of the public sector in 2008, where I worked on a very big reform project, looking at the fishery sector in South Africa. It was a performance review of right holders in the, in the fishery sector in South Africa. And what this project entailed was looking at how right holders in the fishing sector actually utilize their rights. It looked at various sustainable development KPIs, such as whether the sector was transforming whether it was diversifying. It was looking at how many jobs were being created, for example, how much of local sustainable local economic development was created. So that was a really interesting and fascinating project for me to work on. In 2010, I joined one of the country's biggest telcos as head of corporate citizenship. And at the time, corporate citizenship was a really new concept. And essentially, what it was about was looking at what is the role of business in society, especially in relation to identifying key stakeholders, engaging with them understanding what the expectations were from business, and understanding that as corporates create value, what kind of value do they create but also what kind of impacts do they have on the environment on society, etc. So I then, after being in that role for a few years headed up sustainability for the telco across Africa. And this gave me a really amazing opportunity to work across the African continent. I had a lot of work on trying to build capacity in various, you know, in the various African countries, especially in the telecommunication sector, embedding sustainability in the business and looking at how sustainable development can be leveraged, not only to create value, but to really improve people's lives. My last big corporate role was head of social impact for the country's state owned telco. And this was the enterprise arm of the business, also giving me really interesting experience on how sustainability and sustainable development comes into play, when you are designing and working on B2B strategies for business. Much of my work as I said has focused on embedding sustainability into the business, as well as leveraging the power of technology to reduce impacts on our natural resources. I was fortunate to work on pioneering renewable energy projects, including energy efficiency and energy access, as well as focusing on strategies to broaden access to technology for rural and underserved communities. My current role as VP of strategy and engagement in the higher education sector. It's all about using the power of technology to increase access to education, especially. And this talks specifically to go for of the sustainable development goals. So as to you and edX we believe in the power of higher education to unlock human potential, and to help address society's critical needs. edX was founded in 2012 by Harvard and MIT, specifically to expand access to quality education to everyone, everywhere. As some of you already know, last year edX joined with education technology leader to you, bringing together the unique strengths and complimentary capabilities of two major forces in online education. What you do is the digital transformation partner of choice to the world's great nonprofit universities, and edX has bought one of the world's most well known online education brands, and large one of the largest global communities of learners. So edX and to you are a global online learning platform, serving over 44 million learners, supporting more than 230 partners, including 38 of the top 50 universities globally, and offering over 4000 digital programs to the world's most comprehensive free to degree online education marketplace. The development goal for is about quality education, and is amongst the 17 sustainable development goals to, and it speaks specifically to ensuring inclusive and quality equitable quality education to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Now if we draw down a little bit more targets 4.3 and 4b go hand in hand for us at edX through us offering free courses, we're able to expand access to higher education, which ties in with the targets of 4.4 to increase the number of people with relevant skills in the finance for financial success. Slide four, please, Lucia. So I want to I wanted to highlight one of our partnerships, which is with Netflix on Netflix pathways boot camps. It brings higher education and industry together to help increase diversity in tech through innovative online skills training and mentorship students of HBC use this is historically black universities and colleges get access to career defining knowledge and industry connections. Netflix believes strongly in the power of diverse thought, which comes from diverse people target 4.5 of SDG for is about eliminating discrimination in education. While progress has been made to improve racial, ethnic and gender diversity in tech, the number of black, Latino and women engineers, data scientists and digital designers remains far too low. Developing stronger connections between higher education and the workforce is one way to help close this persistent diversity gap. It calls for new innovations in how tech skills and experiences are modeled, delivered and supported. So the Netflix boot camp pathways boot camp brings together companies and universities to help increase diversity in tech through innovative online skills training and mentorship with a custom built curriculum designed by Netflix. And it's just fully online tech boot camp provides provides critical skills needed to accelerate the careers of next generation tech leaders, along with our one to one mentorship with the Netflix product team and career coaching, which I will touch on again in a moment. Our target 4.7 speaks for education for sustainable development and global citizenship, and we have a number of courses across on sustainability across a number of disciplines, but more broadly speaking, we can agree that education is one of the great levers of sustainability. We know that our platform is working, and that we're making an impact because our learners tell us so. 50% of our students say that taking courses with edX change their lives, and 97% of all to youth powered degree alumni achieve positive career outcomes after graduating. We see incredible outcomes across all our courses, our credential programs, and our degrees. Now we've walked through edX evolution over the last few years. Let's talk about how the world has evolved and continues to evolve. We've seen industries like fitness, healthcare and entertainment entirely transform to become more customer centric. We, for example, at to you edX have sponsored sports teams in the US, for example, like the Miami Dolphins football team. And we've seen firsthand how education changes how they pay for it and or think about their careers. Consumer expectations across every industry has changed. People want instant gratification, and the way that's delivered is through flexible, on demand, unbundled and personalized services. Telehealth has expanded access to quality healthcare, especially in remote and underserved communities. Streaming service and bundles, for example, music albums and use predictive analytics to recommend new music. And then fitness classes are online and on demand. And apps like Peloton allow you to stack classes to create your own personal workout playlist. And education is no different. To stay ahead of the changing world and the changing needs, we've conducted a number of reports over the years that have helped us and our industry understand what the future of work might look like. And the corresponding skills requirements, the world of work will demand. In the sustainability space, we have developed a number of short courses. For example, with the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership focused on new skills demand in the corporate world, such as in procurement in supply chain in finance, and also courses specifically designed to lead help corporate employees lead with influence in a world that is increasingly focused on sustainability. In today's world, business strategy is sustainability strategy. So all employees need to be upskilled in understanding the key concepts and drivers of sustainability. Student demographics are rapidly changing. There is an expanding population of adult learners who need to continually upscale and reskill to stay relevant in the in the modern workplace. And the pandemic has not only deepened the demand for relevant workforce aligned education. Learners are more likely to be older, working already and have non traditional learning backgrounds. So the centric means embracing flexible, unbundled and on demand learning that meets the needs of today's learners. Now let's examine what skills and knowledge is needed for early career professionals to excel in their field well into the 21st century. These four train key trends stand out data enabled personalized learning growth of modular stackable learning. Of blended learning on campus, mapping learning to career relevancy. These are trends that we've been seeing for some time now, but covered has simply accelerated them. How are learning institutions responding. Let's dig deeper into each one of these trends. Every person generates at least 1.7 million megabytes of data in just a second. 97.2% of organizations are investing in big data and AI. So education needs to catch up. The learner centric university is using data to improve learner experiences, especially with the vast number of people now learning online. There are more touch points and more ways to garner insight. For example, edX has 44 million learners that we've been collecting data on for years and for years to come. Our platform will have features to help improve engagement and completion. For example, we've just launched a feature to encourage learners to set goals and planning prompts, which have increased engagement to fold. And these tasks continue to be important, but in their traditional form, they are inflexible. Higher education needs to transform to offer off and on ramps to education and work. The right size, the right time, immediately applicable knowledge is knowledge delivery is key. The master's programs are an example of a modular credential that breaks a master's degree into more manageable chunks. Learners can stop at any credential or go on to take more master's programs or stack it into a degree. Recently in South Africa, we've launched micro bachelor's as well as micro master's programs at the University of Stellenbosch, which is a local university. It's the first of its kind to be offered in South Africa. Now even before COVID online was rising in popularity on campus, MIT tested the efficacy of blended learning, starting in 2014 already, and so improved outcomes. Post studies had followed and now post COVID, the impact of online is here to stay and learners are demanding blended and hybrid options as part of the on campus experience. Most C-suite executives believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated changes that are already underway, including escalating and advancing the pace of digital transformation in both work and in learning. As a result, upskilling in both work and as a result, upskilling or reskilling and ensuring that students are employer ready is more important than ever. Higher ed needs to work with industry to ensure that they're preparing students adequately. We're also seeing employers embracing online credentials, even more as a result of COVID of COVID in the hiring process. To close, I want to speak briefly about our career engagement network in this presentation and in the discussion to follow. I'm sure that we're going to discuss how important access to education is, but I also want to put a spotlight on how important it is to set students up for success. An important part of this is pairing talent, our graduate to the right companies. We have the largest network of global talent encompassing adults at every stage of their careers in more than 70 global markets. We can stop for talent providing a streamlined high quality process with a single point of contact for a company's entire enterprise needs. We help employers reskill and upskill their employees and build a future ready workforce through to use enterprise partnership programs. Students and alumni will have lifetime access to career phase job referrals industry insight and workshops that help them stay competitive in the job market and in their career building and events that provide opportunities for them to interact with industry and with each other. By delivering value to our alumni focused on career development, we position to you as a trusted source of career advice and advancement. Over the course of their careers, we can increase the lift of our customers by guiding up to you alumni to the right upscaling and reskilling investments, whether that be completing the undergrad degree pursuing a master's or completing one of our alternative education credential programs. This lifetime offering not only creates value for our students, but for our alumni as well. This is our moment. Let's seize it to create lasting change. Thank you so much, Lucia. Thank you so much. We will now go to the next speaker. And then what will happen is that the next speaker after she's finished. We'll, you know, open the floor to the questions to both again. Thank you so much for some delay. So, the next speaker is a Priscilla Morley. Her current position is she is a program director with the Trevor foundation. And I'm not going to say more. I learned my lesson from trying to say too much the first time and I didn't really say much. So I'm going to allow, I'm going to leave it up to the speaker who will introduce herself and she'll tell you about her work. But one thing I do know about Priscilla Morley is that she is she just graduated from the Masters in development practice program at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. So with that, let's turn it over to Miss Morley. Thank you. Um, Soraya, thanks for the presentation. It was really interesting. And Lucia, thank you very much for inviting the Trevor Noah foundation to be part of the speaker series. My name is Priscilla Morley and I'm the current director of programs. I've been at TNF for the past five months. So I'm still very new here. My professional background is as a social worker where I had a very short stay. And then I moved into working in evaluations and consultancies in the development space. I worked with the Nelson Mandela foundation as their program manager. And then I moved into corporate where I was a corporate social investment specialist for the organization and was responsible for implementing a special project in a community called Orange Farm in the south of Johannesburg which is hugely impoverished. And it was a multi stakeholder partnerships with the partnership with a range of other stakeholders. And I recently left there and joined Trevor Noah foundation. The foundation is very new. We were launched in 2018, and we aim to ensure access to equitable and quality education for youth in underserved communities. We currently currently implement programs in three communities, which are Alderado Park, Brownfish of all and Ivory Park. At Trevor Noah foundation we align ourselves with SDG 14 related to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning for all. The second program is called the Kulani schools program, which means to grow and prosper in Isidkosa, which is the South African language. Our programs include digital skills for learners and educators, career guidance for learners in grades nine to 11 and psychosocial support for educators. Recently we launched a literacy program in native language for foundation phase learners. The second SDG we align with is SDG 10, which aims to reduce inequality within and among countries. This is achieved through the Farah Nani infrastructure project. This year long skills development program up skills 100 youth base base within the community in construction related skills, and uses their skills to improve school infrastructure in communities. This is what happened to look after themselves and their families. In addition to youth to training, we purchase all the materials from local businesses, which supports the township economy. The last SDG we align with is SDG 17 around partnerships for the goals. We partner with the district Department of Education. We have a range of schools will be in 15 schools by the end of this year, local businesses and we have a range of implementing partners. So I'll start with the last SDGs around partnerships. We partner with the district Department of Education. We're currently in 10 schools in the three communities will be in 15 by the end of this year. We have local businesses and implementing partners who support all our pro interventions, because we definitely cannot do this critical work alone. You can go to the next slide. In regards to multi stakeholder relationships we know that they are extremely complex, and especially in the space in which we work in underserved communities with with learners who have vast social social economic challenges. So for me I viewed as being part of a family that you know very little about. So you need to learn how this family operates to to make them part of your own. While organizations working together may have the same goals, internal organizational functioning can pose a lot of challenges. In this government organizations tend to have very lengthy processes for approvals, while for us as a nonprofit, we could have shorter approval turnaround times. This impacts program implementation negatively. And unfortunately, the person who suffers is the beneficiary and who's impacted impacted by these delays. In my experience as a starting point. I have done and would recommend that the first thing in multi stakeholder partnerships, especially if you're working in these kinds of communities is develop agreements upfront. Accountability is essential for all partners verbal agreements are insufficient. These agreements should include very specifically what happens if one partner does not meet the obligations. An example here is that in South Africa it's very difficult to operate in schools without buying in and an agreement with government. So developing and documenting having agreements is essential. This is a focal contact person from all organizations who will form part of the task team. This focal point, a focal contact person or champion is not solely responsible for implementation, but for ensuring information flows to their specific organization. This is the first document and document. It might feel like a tedious task, but it has certainly stood us in good stead, during the partnership. Not only will everybody in the MSP know what it aims to achieve, but increasing accountability will be there. In terms of monitoring and evaluation I think it's very important to agree on a joint monitoring and evaluation framework from the start, which incorporates everybody's indicators as far as possible. There are times to be forgotten, yet results are needed for sustainability, and it's very difficult to go back after the fact, have set up and have very frequent meetings amongst task team members are working environments are extremely dynamic, and being kept abreast of commitments within the partnership is essential. Meeting and reporting to each other frequently also develops trust among members. Communicate everything necessary in the partnership, the good, the bad and the ugly. There's absolutely no way that in this family that is working towards improving the lives of young children that it will be able to navigate the challenges and find alternative solutions without communication. So how about sustainability from the start. Decide on what it looks like upfront that will determine when you exit. If you find yourself remaining in a community for more than five years, or extended periods of time, you're creating dependency, and I'm not really engaged in sustainable development and improving and allowing the community to look after themselves after you exit. Please move to the next slide. Just when looking at the skills needed for early career professionals to excel, personal skills are critical. Firstly, this is about self development, creativity, curiosity, using one's imagination being innovative, problem solving, and, and, and critical thinking are also important personal skills, and just being agile, adaptable, taking risks and being able to manage complex situations. Secondly, in terms of social skills, communication and collaboration, being able to do that, and being very open minded, appreciating different cultures, because we're, we're, we're such a diverse globe country and, and continent and blow, and then just demonstrating leadership, being able to be self motivated and taking initiative. And then the next in terms of information and knowledge, it's being able to, or being willing to learn on an ongoing basis and, and self improve, having access to an analyzing data, reviewing multiple data sources, and just overall generating new knowledge. In terms of digital literacy, individual skills and confidence in being ICT proficient, and the other important thing with digital literacy is also taking ethical responsibility for how the technology is used. The next slide. In terms of sector what changing project needs is definitely educator improved what then there's a need for improved educator recognition educators know the system best because they operate in a daily. We are not going to sustain any of our interventions without educators as an organization we firmly believe that the classroom knowledge they have should be taken more seriously. And if we do this through a program called education change makers, where we bring about 50 individuals who are in the education sector to South Africa for a four week training period. During this work period attendees have the opportunity to develop a prototype to solve educational challenges and are eligible to for funding to kickstart their pro their programs. So what's important for educators is what's going to sustain interventions in in schools educators are not trained as social workers, nurses and policemen, but in our South African schools, they are becoming those. They're faced with up to having 75 learners in one class. And if anything happened, who do they, and an example one educator gave us is one child is giving a young goal is in labor here and you've got 74 other learners to attend to who do you, who do you start with this demonstrates that we need to start building into our programs mental health support for educators. We currently do this by providing psychosocial support to educators. Just to provide them with the necessary skills they need to to navigate the challenges they face. And then lastly technology needs to become an integral part of teaching and learning. Many of our public schools in impoverished communities in South Africa have limited or no access to technology. This hinders the literacy and work readiness. This then means that infrastructure in schools will need to be developed and improved for ICT training to be made available. So as the foundation, we provide digital skills to learners and educators to ensure that we improve digital literacy, digital competence, and that we are preparing young people for the future. Thank you. Okay. Okay, everyone. So, thank you so much, Priscilla. Let me turn on my camera, a little bit. So thank you so much, Priscilla. And thank you, I see that there's at least two questions in the chat. And so we will now begin to take the questions I will go to the chat I'll look at them and I will literally read what you've written. Please keep your questions coming. I do understand that there's maybe a little bit of confusion. They, you know, this is not really like a zoom meeting it's more a webinar where it's just Soraya and Priscilla will have the floor to address your questions and this is a small group. So I think that this is really a good opportunity for you to really have, you know, as much of an interactive discussion with them as possible because it's so small so all your questions can be addressed. So let me begin with the first question that I see here. And it goes to, I think, Soraya, how do we as university engaged with the careers opportunity for alumni you mentioned and work with you. Thank you, Lucia. So the way the career engagement network works is it's a value added service to our alumni. So if you've taken a to you powered program either bootcamp or short course or you've been on one of the to you programs, or equally if you've taken any of the edX courses, you will gain automatic access to the career engagement network. And that is the almost the minefield of resources that help you understand more about the world of work how to get into a state of readiness. And there are various tools that you're able to access. But the key to get into that career engagement network is having taken one of our courses. I think the other important thing about the edX portfolio is that we've got thousands of free courses. So if you don't necessarily have to pay for the courses, you know, we have a very big drive around ensuring access to quality high education, bringing the cost of education down, and also, you know, in keeping with our slogan free to start off with doing a range of free programs and then graduate your way up unto, you know, into doing programs that are paid for. So provided you've done one of our courses, you would then be able to get access to the career engagement network. Okay, thank you. I do have there's another question that's come in, but I'm going to ask Priscilla a question and just shy and I'm seeing all kinds of like, oh, okay, it disappeared. Thank you. So Priscilla, how, you know, a social worker and I get it and you finish your master's in development practice and you end up now at the Trevor Noah Foundation. Did you feel, especially in your new position that you perhaps needed some of this upscaling that Soraya is talking about that maybe a certificate in XYZ would have been helpful. Is that did you go through some process like that I know that you're new but are you even thinking about it, especially after hearing from Soraya. I mean, as part of the master's in development practice here in South Africa you've got to go through an almost age of sustainable development course which is offered by edX it's amazing it's great. And I did, I did that. Then. Yes, you do. You do need something to prepare yourself, but I've also worked in because of my work with multi multiple stakeholders. I have a feel for the NGO space. And I do understand it but you need to get. I think the biggest thing for me is, is there a way to teach someone how to understand impoverished communities you know that's that is the struggles that that I had is it, you can't solve education without solving poverty without solving it's, it's so much, and it's complex. And I think for for edX, just like courses on the sustainable development goals and the six transformations and how they come together. And how the SDGs interlink is is essential for the kind of work that I'm now involved in in in these communities. Okay, thank you. I'm now going to the Q&A there's other questions coming in. I'm Saraya, there is a question here from a charity mungoma. And she says, I am currently pursuing a master's in international development and governance. And it's a new career path for me because my bachelor's was completely different. How best can I join the workforce as a development worker or aid after graduation so this can really go to both but I'll go first with Saraya. And Priscilla, any thoughts. Thank you. Thanks, Lucia, as somebody who studied a completely different undergrad and post grad in law and ended up working in both the public and private sector, my career has taken so many twists and turns. I think, you know, it is absolutely possible. I think it's so important for young people entering the workforce, not to box themselves in, in terms of what they can do and what is possible. We live in an age of learn, unlearn, relearn. And so the opportunities because we have access to education in such broad forms, and there is so much of knowledge and information available through formal and informal learning. The sky is almost the limit for young people. But I think one way as somebody coming out of an academic space into the world of work is to look for those opportunities to become interns to look at graduate placement programs. For example in South Africa, almost every listed corporate has major internship and graduate placement programs. People don't know about it. For example, what is also little known is woman of color around the globe have access to so many scholarship opportunities. They have access to postgraduate and work placement opportunities that we just not aware of. So many institutions that are specifically looking for woman of diversity, woman from third world countries to work in these spaces, struggle to find the right people for these roles, not because they aren't people. But the struggle becomes matching individuals who are keen and educated and wanting to pursue specific careers with opportunities. And so it is really about spending a lot of time finding out where those opportunities are and how to get into them. And in many instances, especially through North South cooperation, you will find that women from developing countries have opportunities to live and work in the most amazing places and in the most amazing sectors. But it's about putting your best foot forward and saying, where are those opportunities? How much effort do I put into finding out where they are and then going for them and like just having the confidence that you can absolutely pivot. And many of us in the new world of work are going to pivot our careers three, four times in our lifetime. And having that open mindset is halfway the battle. You know, if you get stuck in thinking, I've done this and can I do something else, then you will really won't be able to move forward fast enough. Okay, thank you so much, Soraya. And Priscilla, I'm going to go back to you, but I want to sort of push a little bit Soraya's response. So Soraya, that's great. But if I'm not a woman of color, and if I'm not from a developing country, how can I and this is it sort of plays on a support an anonymous question that was put in the Q&A. You know, how can I access these great career job opportunities. What is there for me. So, so is this somebody not of color? No, no, they didn't say. I specifically talked about that because you know I specifically talked about the developing country countries landscape. If you look at the development space. Many countries are driving a narrative of local solutions by local people. So, you know, and especially in South Africa and across Africa. We really wanting to see how we engage our own workforce. And specifically in the NGO space because I've got experience having worked with multiple NGOs in my lifetime is that a lot of the really good skills in the NGO space come from the global north. They don't come from South Africa or any of the African countries, but I think that the access to opportunities now are equal. It is all about how much of your own self drive you have, you know how hungry are you for the opportunity and going out and looking for those opportunities. I believe strongly that we live in the information age, and knowledge is power and the more information you have the better you can progress your own career. And I acknowledge that there are some serious hurdles, their hurdles with lack of access to technology lack of access to tools. There are barriers such as poverty and unemployment and inequality and all of these other barriers but despite that. Depending on where you are sitting and what your desire is to grow your own career. A lot of your success is going to depend on your own self drive and going out and looking for those opportunities, because in many cases there are more opportunities than there is need and it's not a blanket statement, because in Africa we've got like, you know, millions of unemployed youth who don't have skills like the necessary skills and tools to become employable. But for me, there's a bigger problem. There's a disconnect between employers and skills. For example, in South Africa you'll find on a daily basis, there are probably thousands, tens of thousands of vacancies, but the rate to place people into open roles is extremely long and difficult. And so there needs to be a transformation in the corporate and the world of workspace where you have to acknowledge that the person you may be employing may not have all the skills and may not tick all of the boxes on your job description. Maybe somebody who's got some skill and can be trained or retrained and into the world of work and set themselves up for a good career. So, you know, it's about meeting halfway the work that we do with with global corporates is also about getting corporates to to understand to rethink skills and education and formal education. So do you necessarily need a degree. No, you don't. Do you need the right skill. Yes, you do. Can you take a six week course and get the skill you need for a high paying job. You probably can. And so it's about working really closely with corporates to get them to understand how the world of education is changing and the world of work is changing. And how they need to accelerate their flexibility in making sure that they actually place people into their open roles. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Priscilla. I actually agree with everything Saree I said I have a question for Saree just on the last point that you made where you're saying you're working very closely with corporates for them to reimagine what skills development looks like these days. What's the uptake, because one of the things we find is, for example, if you're trying to get a young person into a ownership, or within a corporate corporates 150% math, our kids in impoverished communities don't have that. You know, they've got such massive challenges with accessing education, firstly, you know, whether it's in person or digital. One of them don't have a school she was needed to go to school, you know, and then you're speaking about, then there's this, you know, they've got to compete in a world that doesn't cater for for for the challenge that the challenges that they have with accessing education. How what's the uptake with corporates what's the response around matters like that. Priscilla we found that the response in the US has been great, but it is those early adopters. It is the corporates who have already understood how the world is being disrupted by digitization we live in a complex world. You know the VUCA scenario. It is those early adopters who are reflecting and introspecting on their own business and asking questions about will we still be here in 10 years, we still have a business in 20 years. They are the kind of corporate partners that we have success with, because they are understanding that in order to win, you need to know what the future may potentially look like. In South Africa, the, you know, we don't have many corporate clients. We are working for example with capital bank, which is one of the leaders in thinking outside of the box in terms of how it delivers banking servers to underserved communities. Capitech was born out of a need to serve underserved communities and bank the unbanked. And so therefore our partnership in South Africa with Capitech is to say, what are those new skills you're going to need to become a world class digital bank. And how do we make sure that we are able to deliver the kind of modular stackable out of the box courses that get people skilled really quickly in the kind of new age digital skills you need in order to win as a bank and that partnership has been fantastically fruitful in South Africa in Netflix, where the challenge is saying, how do we diversify our content, how do we make sure that our entertainment and whether it's documentaries or CDs or movies are representative of a global audience because our customer is a global audience. Right. And so we working very closely with Netflix to say, how do we help you recruit more diverse candidates how do we help you recruit the kind of new skills, but building those skills in places where previously you would not have gone. Right. And so the success depends on meeting a corporate at the right moment in time, but also advocating, you know, speaking on platforms like this where people get to hear oh we could do this differently and others are doing it. So the sharing best practice is another critical piece for me on this one. Okay. Thank you. There is another question that came in the chat, and it's asked by Bashiru Koroma. And I think it's a male and he says I have a young emerging institution that is specialized in climate change and sustainable development training for youth. We want to establish it as a college. How can we partner with you and develop to that standard. Lucia, I'm going to give, I'm going to put my email address in the chat. And I'd love for Bashiru to reach out to me. Let's see what, you know, what is the need. What is the opportunity and how best we can. It's very, it's a very technical answer. But in principle, we'd love to hear what the opportunity is and find ways to see whether we, we can help and we can partner. Okay, thank you. There's another question that talks about job opportunities, anonymous participant. And so they say, you know, do you have job opportunities that you can share with MP alumni, for example, from Africa countries that are not South Africans. Job opportunities are posted globally. We've also gone through a transition as you know in the post COVID world we are, we were interrogating what is the best way of work. And so we went from having offices throughout the US to keeping two major global offices open. That's Washington and Cape Town. So a lot of our roles are remote and I'll put our website on. So, you know, your audience can go and have a look at what the kind of roles we recruit for a lot of our roles are skewed towards tech and education and education development. So we're from learning design. So it's really it's we and it take company so a lot of those roles are it take focused, and happy for them to go out and have a look at what what is open. The good thing about working in Africa is a lot of our positions are remote. And then some specific positions are centered around our HQ in DC and some in Cape Town. There we go. Natalie from my team has put on our website details. So happy for your audience to go out and have a look at what is available and to apply. Okay, good. So, for both of you, actually, I'm curious to know here we're we're having this webinar. We're doing it online digitally after COVID, like, if, you know, we were either with, we were with digitalization or we were not without it we were left behind. Are you fighting in your business and what you do that digitalization remains a big issue I mean how can we talk about access and training. If digitization is not where it needs to be to get to everyone, especially that population that's being left behind because of other issues lack of education. Yeah, I'm going to jump in here Lucia I think what is critically important and if I reflect back on my my career having working, having worked in the telecom sector, specifically in South Africa. We are really forced to interrogate our business models and move towards creating shared value and and creating shared value forces you to look at how you create value and share value with your with your stakeholders and the immediate community in which you operate your business and essentially make your money. And because of the shared value model. It restricts companies or it forces companies to look closer to who they would is that they support. So in the info example in the telco space, because telecommunications is what you sell. For example, with handset providers, we partnered with government we partnered with technology providers to build models that help give access, especially to the underserved, and to ensure that you bridge the digital device divide you are making digital divide smaller and smaller over time, because without large populations having access to the internet, having access to data having access to affordable handsets and smartphones, you are excluding potentially millions of people from economic activity from social activity and all the other good things that come with development. So in that previous model. It was about saying, if I provide the data. Can we get a handset provided to potentially in the CSI model to provide really cheap handsets, and can we work with another service provider or a product provider to provide something else and go into communities and look at how you actually empower, not just through having access to the internet and data and, and devices but teaching them on how to for example access YouTube, you know you can access YouTube, watch a video, learn a skill, become a micro entrepreneur, start a micro business and get access to the possibilities for social and economic development are endless, but the flip side of digitization is, if you're in the game, you can really win but if you're not in the game, you really can't move forward. It requires multi party collaboration. It requires ecosystem approaches, it requires system thinking approaches, so that you are able to solve what is a very, very complex problem. So to see it just in our space is definitely a major challenges always something we're thinking about. We've had to set up so none of the schools that when we started working with them, none of them had computer centers, not a single one. So we have had to establish computer centers for them. And then, now take a step back the educator doesn't have the ICT skills themselves, yet they're expected to teach the child. So we had to then again now do digital literacy for educators before we get to the children. But then you expect them to practice. Now you've got this one learning center, and we've got a school of 2300 learners who wears and you've got the educators, 89 educators wears the priority. And we can't provide 2300 computers, you know we only have so much in terms of resources. So it's a major, major challenge. And it definitely hinders what they have what what these young people in this community have access to, or what information they have access to these are, I agree with serene that there's a world of possibilities out there, and they can do and become who they want to be. They just don't have the access to it. And the multi stakeholder approach is what's going to get us there, because if everybody puts their little piece in the pie, we eventually going to start closing this gap for underserved communities and providing the much, much needed support. And they're already behind in a lot of things in you know equities not that it's just, it's exists in the inequalities exist and they're already behind so being behind in education as well as like, it's difficult so digitization is always something we're thinking about. Okay, thank you. And I just, I mean, it could be probably one of the last questions but as I think I have a lot of colleagues that I work with that have their masters are Africans. But for whatever reason, they're still, you know, in low paying jobs, or they're, they don't have a job, because whatever political situation is occurring in their country, specifically in the, in the continent of Africa. So, so, so you come upon me I'm one of those. And I really, I want to, you know, I want to better myself I want to do something I have already a masters. I've paid my dues in terms of studying. And I like this idea of upscaling and maybe getting a certificate to sort of help support my interest in a niche industry that has to do with somehow with the SDGs. So for my understanding and the presentation and I'm just reiterating just to make sure everybody's clear. I take a course that is offered by to you at X. And there is then this opportunity in the career, you have career, but I can't access that until I take my course. Correct. So maybe just go over that process again for those listeners out there who may be interested in taking this a career advancement opportunity. Just, I want to make sure everybody is clear on how that works. Yeah, sure, Lucia. So, especially to speak to the edX platform because that's where you have the thousands of courses that are potentially free. Right. So, you go in as somebody who's got already a post grad you're looking to rescale or upscale or pivot. And you look at the almost bouquet of offerings that we have and I think once you have kind of an understanding of what kind of course you want to take, you're then able to take a course which is completely free on edX. So on any particular discipline, we have a variety of courses. Once that start from free. And if you'd like the certificate, there's a small fee that you pay for the certificate, but you can absolutely take the entire course, gain the skill, and not pay for the certificate. So you can decide you're going to take the course you think the certificates valuable, you want, you want it for your resume you wanted to add some weight to your LinkedIn profile and your chances of being employed, you pay and you then get your certificate. And then there are other courses that are longer, more advanced, you then able to decide what it is you want. You have taken any one of our courses, you then have automatic access into the career engagement network. And this network allows thousands of our partners who are corporate partners to then actually come into this database of alumni who have done our courses and actually recruit. You basically are putting yourself into a pool of potential graduates, which are being accessed from very specific corporates looking for those skills. So for example, if you decide you've got a post grad you've got a masters you do a course in data science. You then have the certificate, all of the employers around the world who are looking for data scientists that are part of our network will access that database and say hey, you know, Abraham's done a course in data science and he sits in Lagos and and we think he's got a fantastic background experience. Let's reach out to him as a potential employee. And that is how you get in. And that is how you work that space and while you're in having access to the career engagement network they're more tools. There's as simple as how do I drop my CV, how do I present myself for an interview, what are the interview skills I need so lots of practical skills that can help you while you are waiting and looking for the job to consistently up your game by making sure that you are, you know, improving your current state of skill and experience and education. And so Soraya just to make sure this career engagement network is relatively new, correct. I mean is this something that's been out there already or something that you're recently launched. So it's, it's been, it's been out there. It's just not well known. And, and so you know it's about getting the word out there. If you have gone through the process of registering for an edX or to your course, and you completed, you will then have access to, to the list of things. And, and to be fair, many of us get all these nice value ads and we don't access them, you know, so, so it has been year it has been very successful year on year the number of graduates who have access to it grows as people graduate out of our courses. And so we've already proven the success of the network. And I love the connection to the workforce in the sense that it's, you know, all you need to, well, all you need to do is take an edX course. It doesn't matter if it's just on your own, but do you need the certificate to prove it to, to access this career engagement network. Luja, I stand to be corrected. I can get that information for you it's a little bit technical for me but I can come back to you with that bit of information. Okay, so this is an opportunity folks for everybody who's here I know that some of you are looking for work you have already a graduate degree. The feeling is good for it's a lifelong thing really so this can be easily done, and then the possibility my goodness that there's a career engagement network where you can put in your CV, and that you know job hunters can can really recruit from there that's that's good instead of having, you know, to send your CVs to people out there in the hemisphere. It's in a specific area or space. And along that same question Soraya, once your CV is in, and is there support is there somebody, or is it, or is the CV just sitting there, or like, do you have people actually working on making the match, or just, or, you know, is it something active or psych or. So, so Lucia there's lots of things happening on the career engagement network depending on what your appetite is and what it is you're looking for. From a recruiter's perspective, it all depends on what the corporates appetite is for a specific skill. So if you have an in demand skill chances are they're going to look for that skill and and so the activity does not come from to you side. You know, we build this network and we manage it maintain it. We add more alumni to this network year on year, but it you know we don't look for the job for the for for the for the graduate. It depends on our corporate partners, what kind of skills they're looking for and if we've got solid partnerships with corporates, they will come to us as the first place to look for that skill. So you've got the right skill. For example, we've got so many partnerships, you know, health care in the US is is one of the areas that there is scale skills. So nurses, clinical hospital staff, a lot of health case professionals are in high demand because there is a scale in the US and our partnerships with other higher ed institutions has been extremely strong as well as our partnership with different state entities and the Department of Health for example, making sure we can all close the loop on plugging in that scale skills gap because the kinds of programs we are driving talks directly to the skills need in a particular state. Okay, okay. There is a question specifically on this I think they're referring to the career engagement network. Okay, he says, thank you very much for your presentation, Soraya. Can you please share a link. So does a link exists where people can go directly to this career engagement network and learn about about it more and and the process, etc. I'm sure it is a closed network. And so, you know, on our website we may talk about it, but you can only get in once you are an alumni. And, you know, that is the value add for our alumni. And so unfortunately I can't give you a link to the career engagement network because you won't be able to get in. But happy to talk further if if your person needs more information. Yeah, you've been here listening and probably reflecting on your own work and reflecting on your own sector needs based on what you've heard and wow it seems to me that what is offering is quite interesting and quite valuable. Beth, are you feeling it? Are you feeling that way yourself or do you feel there are other needs that are needed before we can then get to this career engagement network? I think, and I was actually going to reach out to Soraya afterwards or just go to edX and see what is there for Black Grade 12, you know, what, what can we get on our youth who are in our later years, even those in our skills development program, to find an infrastructure project to engage in and make it available to them. Yes, we have this one learning center, but I think it will just, just seeing that all that information will also open up their minds to the world of possibilities that are out there. They may not access that they can develop their own skill and it can, and it is, you know, it is at no cost. So yeah, it certainly will be a value and I think what I liked about edX is something for everybody, you know, the information is a lot of information on there. Yeah, so I've been thinking I need to go back and check what else is there and what we can offer to our learners. Yes, and I'm in terms of your learners for me is yes the youth, but also the teachers. The teachers are a great, you know, yes. The teachers as well. And also just the the Department of Education officials. You know, there's something there for them as well. But you know what the interesting is what we have with the teachers is most of the teachers in our schools are older and closer to retirement, so their appetite for new knowledge or learning about computers is not really there. You know, so it would appeal more to the younger, the younger educators. Okay, so let us, this has been really, really interesting, very informative. I've learned a lot and actually, I too will follow up on this Korean engagement network, because it's something that the people, the folks I work with worldwide would probably be interested in. And just, I'm sorry, this is open this Korean engagement that we're just to make sure again, it's open to worldwide right it's not just for Africans. It's open. Okay, it's open worldwide as long as you've taken one of our courses, you'll have access to it. Okay, okay, so thank you so much. Any last minute thoughts, comments, before we close down. I think the last comment from me Lucia is just to say, both on the edX and the to you front, in terms of our short courses. We have worked spend a lot of time, especially in the sustainable development space, and the sustainability space, working with some of the best universities like the Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership, looking at what are the new skills that even sustainable development practitioners need. You know, to get them ready for the world of work. So I want to encourage your audience to go on to our website have a look at what the courses are. And you know, consider taking one of them because the barrier to entry is you can be anywhere in the world. You know, so you've taken that physical barrier to entry away. You don't have to go to the UK or to Europe to do one of these world class courses, you can actually do it from wherever you are. And then in addition to that, you know, look at our edX portfolio we've got over 4000 courses with very skewed towards digital and new age courses. So have a look I'm sure there is, there would be something that would appeal. Thank you Priscilla. Firstly, Lucille, thank you for inviting us to share the work of a very young organization. I've certainly learned a lot as well from from Soraya and just what we could and started rethinking how we provide some of this important information to the, to the youth in our communities. The other thing I wanted to say is the MDP has been the probably the most life changing part of my, my academic career, and it just opened my mind up to what's possible. And that's when I knew that I wasn't supposed to be in the private sector so anyone who's doing the MDP enjoy it and and it's the world is. It just opens up your mind so much but thank you very much. I had a great time here today. Thank you. Thank you and great sharing the platform with you Priscilla. Thanks Soraya. It was awesome sharing it with you too. And thank you both for being here with us and sharing your, your experiences and your work. I find that again quite quite interesting. So, I really hope that this is not the last time we talk and I'm sure we will talk, we will meet up again because all kinds of light bulbs have gone off on my head as both of you are speaking and I, we can, but I'll follow, I'll do offline, I'll follow up in terms of those conversations. So everyone thank you for being here. You know, I said it was a small audience but a powerful good audience. And I really, you know, I hope to see you this is the second of the speaker series that will be another one, September 21, and the focus will be on Asia. And the focus will be from that part of the world. But I think, you know, based on what Soraya was saying, this, you know, network and edX courses, it's everywhere worldwide. It doesn't have to be in Africa. You can be anywhere in the world and access these courses. So this is really good. Okay, so everybody. In regards to everybody as Emmanuel, I just said, I know he's from Nigeria, and faith Clark also thank you faith. Actually faith is interesting. I'm just going to throw this in but faith is, it's opening or really trying to organize a graduate degree program in Jamaica. So faith, this is, you know, these edX courses or courses similar courses like this that are online, could be something that you, that would be helpful, but we can talk about that offline. Anyway, everyone, goodbye. Thank you so much. Until next time. Bye.