 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcast. I'm Jamie Scott of Kataya here in the newsroom for Tech, Telecom, and Data Center Professionals. Joining me here today at VirtualPTC 21 is my good friend, Mr. Rudolph Gordon Seymour. He is the head of International Funding over at Telecom's San Frontiers, or TSF. Rudolph, happy new year. Happy new year, Jamie, and thank you very much for inviting TSF and giving us an opportunity to share some of the work that we do. And it's such critical work. I'm so excited to help spread the word here for you. Tell our viewers who might not already know just a little bit about TSF. Yeah, well, TSF, as many will know, was the first NGO in the world that focused on emergency response technologies. We aim to deploy anywhere in the world within 24 hours of humanitarian crisis. We've actually been operating since 1998. And in that time, we have carried out over 140 deployments across over 70 countries and supported over 20 million people during that period. So it's an incredible organization and they do amazing work. And 2020, a year on like any other, how did TSF fare? Well, I think like most organizations, we're no different. We've had to adapt to this kind of new world and this new normal. So many of our kind of long term programs, we've had to adapt to in light of the pandemic. So, for instance, we provided education to Syrian refugees in Turkey. We had to move those children out of the classroom, obviously, for COVID reasons. And what we did, we put in place distance learning platforms. We even gave them connectivity so they could access this remotely and try to kind of just ensure that the program could continue as normal. We also did a lot of work in Syria in terms of connecting medical centers. So we connected 10 medical centers in Syria, which were obviously much needed because not only is it a war torn country whose medical infrastructure is already at bursting point. You add COVID into this mix and you've got a very big problem. So these medical centers support over 160,000 patients. And we will continue to support those centers as we move forward. And also in Mexico, we've done a lot of work to support the migrants in the kind of South American migrant corridors. We've got multiple centers down there and their information centers. So we've kind of adapted those to become COVID friendly, so not only provide information that they might require in terms of asylum seeking and general legal requirements, but also COVID information now as well. So that's kind of some of the adapting that we needed to do for the long term programs. We've also been pretty busy on the deployment side as well. Obviously deploying can be a bit more challenging during this pandemic. In August, many people would have seen the Beirut port explosions. So we deployed a team down there. We connected our pay call center because there were over 300,000 people displaced from those explosions, so they needed various support through our center, financial support and even psychological support. And we're still actually operating on the ground there with our call center now. So that continues. We also deployed to Lesvos. There was a big fire in a migrant camp there. So we deployed there and that was in September. So we had a deployment in August, deployment in September. And we provided internet connectivity to the new camp that they created. And it was the quarantine area. So anyone that had been there's 12,000 migrants, by the way, in this camp. So anyone that tested positive for COVID, we would actually provide connectivity within that quarantined area. And then lastly, we did a deployment in November in Honduras due to Hurricane Eta. So we provided some Wi-Fi, therefore, in some of the shelters. And we also carried out some training for the Honduran Red Cross as well. So yeah, 2020 was a pretty busy year. And like all organizations, we had to adapt. Unbelievable. Just the fact that the PSF Heroes is the word I choose to call you guys. Deploying against all odds, still keeping the same education programs that you have up and running during these critical times, while still deploying to these areas that need you most for that critical communication structure for the first responders. Just incredible. Great work. So tell me, what does 2021 have in store for you? Well, I think 2021 is really a continuation of 2020. We'll continue to support the long-term programs that we have in place. The pandemic hasn't gone away, so we still have to adapt to that. We will obviously make sure we're ready for any emergency deployments. And we're still in kind of typhoon season in Asia. So this can be kind of a busy period for us in Asia. So we kind of stand ready for that. We make sure we can respond correctly and obviously apply any COVID social distancing rules that we have to. I mean, every time we deploy, it's a different rule for every country. Our engineers have to get tested multiple times. And it's quite a logistical operation. So we will continue with that work. We'll also look at, as we always do, look at new innovations as well. So we like to kind of be as innovative as possible and look at new technologies that we can use in the field in deployments. So that's very important to us. And from my perspective, I will be trying to attend as many industry events as I can. Obviously, we live in this virtual world now. We're kind of getting used to it. I know everyone's kind of missing those face-to-face interactions. I know I certainly am. It's been a very different year to the previous one. But TSM will continue to participate where we can. Hopefully, we'll get lots of invitations to these events. And we want to grow our partner network because we need that funding to be able to operate effectively. And actually, if you look at COVID, that's added a new layer of cost to our operations, like so many organizations. Absolutely, absolutely. What a incredibly challenging year we have laying before us. And yet, again, I have no doubt that TSM will rise to the occasion. And we're so proud of the work that you have done for international communications and for the folks in need. So how can our viewers help? Where can they go? Well, there's probably a number of ways. Obviously, they can go to the TSF website, which is tsfi.org. There's some highlighted red buttons in the top right corner there. So you can click on donate or support us, which will take you to our kind of partner page and tell you how you can become a partner. Or alternatively, if you want to make micro donations, you can just do that through the donate button. You can also contact me direct and hopefully during this event, people can visit our virtual lounge and hopefully have lots of good conversations. Well, there you have it, tsfi.org. Glad they're to donate or support this great industry association that's been there to support us for many, many years and hopefully many, many more. Thank you so much, Rudolf, for your time today. And thank you, viewers, for tuning in to JSA TV. Happy next week.