 Hello, everyone, and a warm welcome to the inauguration ceremony for the Pacific Regional Channel. I have the privilege to present Professor Asha Kanwar, President and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning for her address. Thank you, Helen. Honorable Ministers, colleagues, and friends in Fiji, Nauru, and Samoa. Warm greetings from the Commonwealth of Learning here, and of course, it's winter, so it's quite cold. And I wish this pandemic wasn't there, so we could have all met in person, either in the beautiful Pacific or even here in Vancouver. But thank you for making the time to join this meeting. We are very grateful to you for your consistent support to the Commonwealth of Learning, both financial and intellectual, which enables us to actually do our work in the field and to serve you better. I think you have done an excellent job during the pandemic in trying to keep the education and training continued, even though there have been complete lockdowns. But even we have tried, Honorable Ministers, we sent you a report on what was the situation in the Commonwealth during the pandemic and how various countries had responded. And I hope you found that useful. But I think in Fiji, let me just highlight one thing during this time that we've done in each of your countries. Of course, Fiji hosts very kindly and generously the Pacific Regional Centre for Distance Education for Development called Backfold, hosted by the University of the South Pacific. And through that centre, we organised a massive open online course, a MOOC on Functional Numeracy. And the maximum number of participants were from Fiji. Of course, during this time, we also worked with the Fiji National University and supported them to put 33 courses in different subjects online so that they could continue to reach their students. In Nauru, working with your ministry, Honorable Minister, and with the Ministries of Industry and Environment and Taiwan Technical Mission, we have worked with community leaders and farmers to develop and design an app for kitchen gardening so that communities can develop and grow their own fruits and vegetables. So this is something which has happened even during the pandemic. And in Samoa Honorable Minister, of course the capacity development for assessment because one of the big casualties during the pandemic was that how do we actually assess online learning? And this is something which we supported the National University of Samoa to do during the pandemic. In addition, what we had also done was we offered Coursera courses. Col has joined a partnership with the Coursera. Usually it costs quite a lot of money. In fact, one license costs $400, but they gave us 125,000 free licenses. And we have participants from 49 Commonwealth countries who have taken these courses. In some countries, a small country like Guyana, 30,000 unemployed youth have joined. In the Pacific, because of connectivity issues, in many of your countries, the uptake has not been so big. For example, in Samoa, in fact, it's 298, which is not so bad, but we could have more people. Now, Route 56, Fiji is even less than that. So my request to you honourable ministers is that these are wonderful courses about 4,000 professional courses for skills development, all of them online and offered free. Please encourage your colleagues to find the people to take them. In fact, I have taken two courses and I found them wonderful. They are from the top universities in the world, 200 top universities. I've done two courses. One is from Yale University and one is from Case Western. So please make use of these. And we still have a window of opportunity until 31st March, which means people have to enroll in these courses and you can generate a certificate from those universities. But I think we have to do it fairly quickly because all the enrollments must be completed before December, I think. So we will be again getting in touch with your ministries to ask for more names. And if you yourselves honourable ministers are interested, we will also invite you to join these courses. So that was one big thing I wanted to announce and request your help. But today, we are meeting for another big task. We have focal points meetings for every region and when we met the Pacific focal points in May this year, we asked them that what are your needs because we need your help to shape our strategic plan. And one of the things which they said is that we want a regional broadcasting service for education and training in the Pacific. So we said, yes, we will try and do that. And we will try and do it before 21st November because 21st November is World ICT Day. So we called another meeting in August and in which we requested the focal points that tell us what do you want? You know, what exactly do you want? So five countries participated and three countries came forward, which is your countries. And we are very happy that they came and we asked also that what content do you want? We will curate the content according to your curriculum and provide you videos. And in that meeting, it was decided that instead of asking for a regional broadcasting service, why don't we provide a video on demand service which can even work in low bandwidth situations? So which is why we started then curating video content. And of course, this has now become a platform which call has set up. It's called the pacificregionalchannel.org and it provides direct access to content which is curated as per your requirements through a series of showcases or channels. Now these channels are accessible from any computer, mobile device or video feed and you can easily link them to your local television broadcast channels if you wish. So far, and this is still a work in progress, 800 video resources have been added to this platform and we are going to provide the control to your local contact points for further additions and maintenance of the content. For example, in your countries, the video resources, in Fiji, they asked for content in secondary level for secondary level in biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics. In Nauru, we have curated content at again secondary level, biology, chemistry, scientific method and diamond space. And in Samoa, the content is at the tertiary level for English, mathematics and statistics. Of course, the platform has capacity for many more countries so you can create a lot of content. We for our part will continue to replenish the content and add more and more videos as soon as we find them because there are some people have developed simulations, interesting things, all of that we will be adding. But at the same time, we are also committed to building the capacity in your own country so that your own teachers are able to develop their own content and then upload it because that's the only way to make it sustainable. This video on demand platform will serve as a valuable resource to support education at all levels. This is just the start. And we expect your educators from your countries to contribute to make it into a very vibrant shared resource because this is not the first and last pandemic. There can be many disasters in terms of cyclones, hurricanes and so on. So what we really need is resilient education systems which have all this content up in the cloud. So even if things are washed away, books are washed away, our online content is safe and we can access it and keep the doors of learning open at any time. And I also have a piece of good news but I'll tell you in the end. So back to you, Helen. Thank you, Professor Kanwar. It is my great pleasure to introduce the Fiji Minister for Education, Heritage and Arts, the Honorable Rosie Ackbar. Professor Asha Kanwar, President and Chief Executive Officer of Commonwealth of Learning, Honorable Ministers, ladies and gentlemen. Nisam Bhulevinaka and a very good morning to you all from the beautiful islands of Fiji. It is indeed an honor to be part of the inaugural ceremony for the Pacific Regional Channel. I'd like to thank Professor Asha for the brief this morning and I must say that all thanks and appreciation goes to the Commonwealth of Learning for their continued support in enhancing education for our students at all levels across the region under your leadership. The Pacific Regional Channel is yet another example of called support to improve the learning of our students. Video on demand is perhaps one of the earliest attempt at providing our students with online learning support as students would determine demand. But before I go on, I think it's very important to note the challenges that were posed to our member countries when COVID-19 impacted us. And I think we all have been able to manage the pandemic and ensure that the learning and the education of our children continued despite the various challenges we had and online learning for me, for us here in Fiji was the new means of ensuring that our children remained occupied and continued with the lessons while at home as well. So we welcome this resource with open arms, which is of great value, particularly for the practical sciences and mathematics. As I believe these concepts are generally more difficult for our students to grasp. My term with the Minister of Education for the last two years has also indicated that our students need a lot of extra support when it comes to learning of sciences, science subjects. So the Fijian government is fully committed to providing students with opportunities to engage with e-learning tools. While we are mindful that connectivity and other resource limitations create challenges to our efforts to provide students with such opportunities, we must all do our best to provide such opportunities. The Pacific regional channel populated with video content which is now accessible through mobile devices and devices with internet connectivity will definitely will sure provide learning materials for our teachers and students. Our issues here in the country with connectivity and the cost of internet also makes it difficult for equitable access of such very important resources. So we promote downloadable resources which in our context immediately becomes accessible. And we did the same during the period when our schools were closed for almost three months. And I'm hoping that these can also be downloadable. I'm sure that our schools and teachers will take great advantage of this learning resources and use it as materials for learning. Fijian students now will be able to access biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics lessons with the aim to have many other subjects added into this platform as we progress. Ladies and gentlemen, this resource has come at a very good time when we are rethinking, teaching at a global level as we continue to endure this pandemic. But I seriously believe that this pandemic COVID-19 has taught us to think outside the box, to rethink and re-strategize and create fit for purpose resources within the means that we have as countries. With Kohl's assistance now, our teachers and students have additional resources at the disposal whenever they wish to use it. And I can assure the members here that the Fiji will encourage all teachers and heads of schools and students to make the best use of these resources that has been designed specifically for them. The Pacific region channel will open various other avenues, not for our educators and learners, but also for those who have vested interest in the education of our channel. I thank the Commonwealth of Learning for their continued support towards the Fijian government in creating a smarter Fiji. And I must also thank our counterparts for the support and contribution. Professor Asha, I'd also like to thank you for your leadership and I look forward to working with you and your team in future to ensure that we progress with this initiative and any other initiative. And of course, as you mentioned about the online courses, we will continue to encourage our Fijian students and citizens and I for one, definitely would like to be part of that. So you will also receive my application to be part of some of the courses there. But all in all, it's early morning here in Fiji. And like you said, I wish we could have met physically if the pandemic was not here and progress further with these discussions. So thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be part of this virtual inauguration of our channel here today. Thank you, Minister. It is my great pleasure to introduce our next special guest, the Minister of Education, Sports and Culture Samoa, the Honorable Laou Kanet Tissio. Honorable President of Carl, Professor Asha Kanwa. Honorable Ministers of Pacific Island Nations, Distinguished Tharova and Greetings from Samoa. It gives me a great pleasure to join you in this in a close ceremony for the launch of this exciting venture, the Pacific Region Regional Channel. And I would like to join the Pacific community in thanking and congratulating the Commonwealth of Learning for its vision and foresight in launching such innovative and much needed technology. The video on demand radio channels for the Pacific, such an innovations could not have come at a better time. As all Pacific nations are struggling to meet the technology demands of the pandemic era, with its heavy reliance on technology to ensure business, working and learning continuity. I am told that this video on demand technology provides video streaming services, which can either be offered online using the internet in situations where there is sufficient bandwidth, but it can also be offered in areas of limited bandwidth by combining with a library of video content and using TV and radio broadcasting services. Such a combination would favor our situation with both the ministry of education and the National University of Samoa, have TV and radio broadcasting facilities as well as online learning platforms. Samoa as a member of the Commonwealth of Learning look forward to fully utilizing these exciting regional initiatives. I would like to thank all parties that have been instrumental in its inception and setup. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank President Ashwa and the Commonwealth of Learning for its continuous support for small island nations like us in the various fields of education and technology. We have benefited immensely from your assistance in capacity building and training, use of digital learning platforms and numerous donations of open educational resources as part of your COVID response. And I conclude this morning by wishing you all the best in this new initiative, which will ensure better access to educational resources. Thank you for your attention and so far so for from Samoa. Thank you, thank you, Andrew Register. And from Nauru, it is my pleasure to introduce the Deputy Minister for Education, the Honorable Richard Hyde Menke. I am honored to represent his Excellency, the President Lionel Rowe Nengmea, MP and as Minister for Education on this occasion. This Excellency sends his apologies as due to prior commitments, he is unable to join us today. At the outset, I would like to congratulate the Commonwealth of Learning under the current leadership of Professor Asha Kanwar and her team for its tireless contribution to education. The ongoing support offered by Paul to Nauru and our neighboring Pacific Island States has always been one that promotes sustainable development. These supports has never been relevant or needed more than today. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic thrust upon us its agenda and the top of our priorities and at all levels of our educational institutions. Not only did the COVID-19 situation present new challenges, but it also brought to the forefront weaknesses and gaps in our education systems that required urgent attention. For us in the Pacific Island States, this added another issue onto our list of vulnerabilities and challenges. Among these urgencies, virtual learning rapidly became a necessity and the new normal of operating. Fortunately for us, Paul has moved ahead of its time. While most of us are still grappling with the new realities presented by COVID-19, Paul had been championing the virtual learning front in its mission quest to empower people of learning, for learning through its lens of inclusivity and education empowerment for those most vulnerable, the idea of remote and virtual learning was well in advance. Today, I am honored to accept the handover of the video on demand platform for Nauru. It is a prime example of what Paul has long encouraged in our education systems and that is a response to disasters through resilience. The opportunity to explore, network and innovate on existing resources and services with other Pacific Island States would call at the helm is indeed an example of building resilience in our systems. We are looking forward to engaging with the subjects and contents of our curriculum presented to Paul for this project and eagerly anticipate a model that will provide guidance and direction for subsequent work and for the potential capacity building opportunities. The Department of Education is in discussion with relevant service providers to ensure that capabilities and requirements are met for this initiative. Professor Asha, your works of encouragement are taken on board and we will revisit our efforts on the Causary Recovery Program. Surely we should be able to find the time if you are able to find the time and motivation to take courses. In conclusion, I would like to thank Paul and reiterate its invaluable commitment to education. I also would like to thank and acknowledge all of those who have made this possible, especially the vocal points of the Pacific States that have come together to put forward this great initiative. Thank you. It's so good to hear from you. If we were meeting around the table, I would have asked the three of you honorable ministers to cut the ribbon. So basically symbolically, you are cutting the ribbon from three different locations, but you have started something which I hope will spread to the other nine countries as well. And let me just, you know, the one question which came up from honorable Rosie Akbar about, you know, how you can upload and in low bandwidth. Let me just invite my direct IT and innovation who is leading this whole project to tell us how that can be done in just a few words. Professor Malik. Thank you, Professor Asha. Yeah, the platform has been designed to be completely downloadable. So all the resources that we've loaded on it are downloadable at your end. So you can do it even in a low bandwidth scenario and then host them on local servers and link them to your local systems on whatever bandwidth you have available in country. So it's a very flexible platform. We also look forward to having an active participation in terms of control of the content from the country's concern. So if you could indicate people who could actually, you know, lead national efforts to contribute to the platform, that would be very good. And you can create new showcases or channels as we call them on this platform. Pijio permission, I would like to acknowledge a couple of individuals who have been playing a very significant part in this whole exercise. The first one is Ricky Cheng from our own team who's been, who's established the platform and the landing page and, you know, populated, et cetera. And the other one is also participating in this webinar on this meeting today, Dr. Nantakumar Subramaniam, who's sitting out in Malaysia at a very early hour in the morning. And he's helped to curate all of the content from worldwide OER repositories and made this, the possibility of the rollout of this platform, you know, it made it a reality. So thank you very much to both of you. And I look forward to having a very active participation from the country's concerns. Thank you. Thank you. So thank you, Professor Malik. And now for the good news, honorable ministers, just today we've signed an agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade New Zealand in which over the next four years we have been given a grant. It hasn't come yet, but we've just signed the agreement to strengthen our work in the nine Pacific Island States, which means your countries, in three areas. And those three areas are off-top priority, I know, as you have just told us. One is teacher development in ICT integration. One is in online learning and quality content. And the third in skills development for livelihoods. I think these are all top priorities for you, honorable ministers. So this is the good news that in addition to our own modest resources, we have received also some commitment from New Zealand to further strengthen our work. And we are looking forward to working very closely with you. You have been extremely supportive and we really value your support because without your support, you know, political will is really important. And then it trickles down, you know, to the rank and file. So your personal stewardship and championship of this cause of making a difference to hundreds and thousands of people is really helping us out. So thank you, be safe. And thank you so much for taking part in this in spite of your schedules. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Professor. Thank you again, Professor Kanwar. We invite you to visit pacificregionalchannel.org and start exploring the video on demand platform that has been custom designed for the Pacific Island States. This brings us to the close of today's ceremony. Thank you for participating and goodbye.