 a very interesting session. So thank you very much. Amazing. Thank you so much, Sylvia. Now we have our first panelist, Eric Rukvesha. Eric, can you please tell us about the work of your amazing organization, Smart Agroforestry for Safe People, or SASP? Hello, everyone. Hello, Eric. Yes, we can hear you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much for hosting me. It's my great pleasure to be with different people, especially my fellow youth here in this wonderful forum, Saidi Wren. And I'm really excited to share what you are doing and what you are doing in the society and how are we integrating technology so that every youth that I've repatriated has done a longer, a dirty job, or work for all the people. So I would be pleased to share my screen if possible with a few slides so that we can go ahead if possible. Perfect. Would it be possible to share a screen? Yes, okay. Can you see my screen now? Not yet. Not yet. Yes, perfect. We can see it. Okay, great, great. So thank you very much. Once again, I'm Eric Eretibesha, a co-founder of Smartagraphers for Safe People, and this was the initiative that started in 2019. I established it when I joined the university in conservation agriculture. And after observing that our society, there is a lot of work to be done, especially on alleviating poverty and also ensure that you are living in a good condition of environment. So after analysis of seeing that about 90% of our local communities are based on farmers, but they're not earning enough to sustain their life. And this was not only the question, but also there was also a question of planting, which has a great percentage. And this is very linked to how people are accessing the intuitive food, but also if the people have these nutritious food, how are they going to use, how would they prepare their dairy meat? So after analyzing this, I come with a solution of Smartagraphers for Safe People, which was aimed to help our society to end the malnutrition, living in safe environment, creating a climate which is resilient. Here, I mean, the people are massively investing in doing agriculture which is destroyed or harm our environment. They just declare everything when they are going to plant and after planting, they offer everything to the animals and then our land stay battery. So after thinking of all of this, I started with a smaller nursery of producing three-club fruits to the farmers. So what we did, we just created a flood demo for the farmers. We planted citrus, papaya as mother farm, and then we teach people how they can also plant their farms and also we offered grafted seedlings to the farmers so that they can be able to afford the nutrition values which are found in the fruits, which are not being able to be found in others. But this was also aimed to help farmers to understand how they can integrate their farming. How can they do agroforestry without only planting lice or planting the cabbages, planting the maize, but also how they can have a farm with three-clops which are going to help maintain the moisture of their soil, but also producing fruits to their children and again, combining the effect of climate change as we know most of the trees, they are able to capture carbon dioxide which is being emitted from different industrial activities which are developing. So far we are doing amazing job, I can say this and this farm, we're very much integrating the technology to teach people how they can integrate their farm and how they can improve their farm. We are now currently working on sensors which are helping us to understand the moisture of the soil and help us in irrigation, scheduling. So this is very helpful and farmers are learning a lot, but let's stop here. We want to continue to create a climate-lesidient of the legion by elevating poverty, moving this value of my nutrition and this is why we in 10 years to come, we wish to create more jobs to the vulnerable people as we improve our farm, we get to employ people there, especially you to show them it is very possible to join agroforestry, it is very possible to do a modern-based agriculture without just taking a hoe and going to the farm. So we also wish to be the more alive in agriculture, technology, live in the farm, where people from the legion will come and try to observe what they can do, what they can use in technology to develop the society. And thank you very much. If there is any fellow application, ready to answer. Thank you. That sounds like an amazing organization and incredibly innovative. Thank you so much for telling us. I just have one follow-up question for you. What advice do you have for fellow young people, for fellow youth who are also passionate about environmental issues like sustainable agriculture, but don't really know where to start, don't know how to begin in the process. Okay, thank you very much. For most of the youth, understand that we catch up just to taking the panga and hoe and go to farm, all they know that it's a dirty job. You can't do it when you want to be the same. But this kind of understanding should be stopped because our environment is our concern and the environment in it does. So if we're all just trying to escape and going into other careers, we're not going to make an impact. What we need as youth, we need to take initiative. Just let's observe and understand our community. What do we need? For example, in these days, cities are glowing and there is a lot of problem of waste. And people just, you see trash, you move. But it is possible to think that we can take this trash and then make a fertilizer or recycle them into a very useful product to our community. So we need to take initiative of our community. But also we need to remember that if you're not going to do it, it is going to impact us as a youth. We are the future. We are currently the future of this world. So we need to take initiative and we need also to be active, to always search information on what our community needs, especially in agriculture. If you are saying agriculture is not developing, we need the technology. So if you did technology, please join agriculture and then integrate your agriculture, integrate your skills of ICT, of sensors into agriculture. So that's everyone in the city comfortable and we are going to be the changing maker of our environment. Thank you. That's incredibly inspiring to hear, Eric. I completely agree. We are the future and it's amazing to hear that you're actively involved in integrating those IDC skills in using that to mobilize sustainable agriculture. It's amazing to hear about that. Thank you so much for your many spotlight. Next, we'll be moving to our second panelist, Lydia Burhanu, who is also affiliated with Generation Connect as an Africa youth envoy and is studying environmental engineering currently. Lydia, we'd love to hear your story and hear your thoughts about sustainable agriculture and what that means to you as a young person in STEM. Lydia, I'm not sure if we can hear you. Can you hear me now? Yes, perfect. Thank you. Okay, so the question was asked a young person in STEM what I think about sustainable agriculture. Yes, or you can even explain what you think environmental engineering is and what that would mean for young people. Okay, to start, environmental engineering is professional engineering. It's a discipline. Environmental engineering is the application of scientific and engineering principles. It helps to improve and maintain the environment which takes part as agriculture. So environmental really focuses on agriculture because it is how the world sustains and how the world gets nourished. So environmental engineering helps agriculture to by helping on reducing waste that affects soil pollution, water waste management, and water pollution that works on different techniques to reduce waste and pollution. And that's what environmental engineering is in STEM. It helps create many mechanisms that decrease pollution and other hazards that bring famine and pollution and everything. So for the youth, it's a very interesting field and also helps with the conservation and preservation of natural resources. That's what environmental engineering is. Perfect, and I'd love to know what made you interested in environmental engineering? How did you start your journey with the field? Well, my interest with environmental engineering is a little different from the usual, the common, since I'm a generation connect youth envoy and I'm also IGF youth ambassador and also I'm also involved in tech too. People are really surprised how I'm in a field of environmental engineering that is quite different from tech but like little did they know that you can actually connect this to and help to, I actually want to work on E-West and US preservation and control. So by connecting this to, you can actually create something that's really good and that could help our environment and also the agriculture. That's so interesting. I never thought of the field as so innovative in that way, thank you so much. I just have one final question for you. As a young person in STEM, studying in this incredible field, what do you think is a key barrier or obstacle to youth innovation in your field? Do you find it's hard for young people to break into environmental engineering? Well, most people, I can only speak of the people in my country and my peers. Most people aren't interested about environmental engineering because they don't know what it's about and how it actually could impact the world. So I think, I'm sorry, I think I lost it here. No worries. Do you think- I need the question, I'm sorry. Yeah, do you think that it's difficult for young people to break into environmental engineering or do you think that it's easy nowadays? Environmental engineering is a very flexible field, first of all. Like there's only one field that you can focus on. For example, in environmental engineering, there is hydraulics that works on water and water supply and water management. And there's e-waste that I told you that I'm specifically interested in that's connected to tech. And there is also other like soil, some also relate to geology. So I think environmental engineering could be flexible and you can break down however you want it. But like when it comes to innovation, in environmental engineering, just like as different innovation in different disciplines, it has the same problems like time, capital, resources and the problem of people not wanting to change how things were, the people's optimism for adoption for change, that's also a problem in a vision just as much as other disciplines have it. Environmental engineering also has that discipline, I think so. And also like capital and everything, like different disciplines, environmental engineering have also those shortcomings when it comes to innovation. Amazing, I just have actually one final question. Do you have any advice for a young person who is interested in studying environmental engineering, someone who doesn't know where to start? Well, okay, for me too, two years ago when I joined this field, I was also a newbie. I was also a little confused too. But what you should know is like when it comes to time, I think you will see what you'd like and which field you want to specialize into. And there are also many opportunities that are coming and the world is changing every day. And there are so many things you could do with environmental engineering where also you're helping, they could be climate change or food or helping an agriculture, anything that you want. Environmental engineering is very broad and it really helps sustain the world. So that's my advice. That's amazing, I totally agree. The world is changing every day more and more rapidly and I hope that you inspire more young people in the audience or when they're watching this to get interested in environmental engineering. So thank you so much for your many spotlight, Lydia. We have our last panelist, his name is Shadrach and he is a incredible entrepreneur who is the founder of a nonprofit called Cocoa360. Shadrach, welcome. I was wondering if you could explain your initiative Cocoa360 to us in a nutshell. Oh yeah, great, glad to be here. Figure will probably be easier for me to share my screen. I talk so, but I'll probably just jump straight into it. So what we do at Cocoa360 is really simple, right? For many of us, when we think about agriculture or we think about agriculture, we just begin to quickly think about fertilizer, inputs, productivity and all of that and that domain is really great. But rarely do we see agriculture as a tool, not only on the tech side, not only on the innovation side, but innovation from the standpoint of actual social services, right? I mean, healthcare, education and all of that. So what we figured at Cocoa360, we said, look, I mean, I bet almost everybody on this call probably loves chocolate, okay? And then the weather is out there, winter is coming. So I see people are probably getting their chocolate and join your hot chocolate. But if you love hot chocolate, then you have in Ghana close to about 865,000 smallholder cocoa farmers and about 1.2 million people in the whole cocoa value chain to tank. So in Ghana, for instance, Ghana is this world's second leading exporter of cocoa. The country is able to generate about $3 billion every year in export revenue, literally right behind gold, which is the country's first leading exporter. And it's not even oil, literally. And we're able to do this, just like Ivory Coast, which is number one, is able to do that. Indonesia is able to do that. Nigeria is able to do that. Any Tanzania, you name it, Cameroon, any of the cocoa producing countries are able to end that much from cocoa revenues because of cocoa farmers. But the reality is when you actually get down there, these farmers are very poor. And one of the significant challenges you see in these kinds of settings is actually that they struggle to provide everything that they are preschoolers. Pre-school by pre-school, I mean nursery, kindergarten, nursery cage, one cage to kindergarten, one kindergarten, two. Everything, those three to eight-year-old kids need to fully fulfill their potential in terms of education and then healthcare. When you go to school, you have what you call your dispensary close by. But in those ages, every scientist on this call also knows that those are the ages and the times that the brain is forming, right? Those are your critical formative years. So a child within that period need to have the very best of everything. How is it that if you look at Ghana, for instance, 75% of children in cocoa-grown communities in Ghana do not have access to early childhood development or early childhood education. That's such a tragedy. So when we set out, we just asked a simple question. How can we leverage the resources, the assets that these communities already have to really give them what they need? So it was not, you know, we come in and think we can do something different. So we say, you know what, they have cocoa. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna work with them and then we're going to leverage revenues from a community-run cocoa farm and then we will use those to eliminate the barriers to education and healthcare for that very vulnerable group of children, three to eight-year-olds. And that's all we've been doing. You know, so the past seven years, I would say, really, we've been fortunate to win a lot of funding and, you know, we went down to Ghana. We raised a couple of millions. We went down to Ghana. We have about 60 acres of land. And on the 60 acres, we have an all-girls tuition free school that has about 270 girls all in full right, full scholarships right now. And then we also have what you call it, a community health facility, a community clinic, right? And so what we do then is that we told the community, okay, now we have a cocoa farm, right? And then we have these facilities. Your children are going to be in exchange. If you want your children to benefit from the quality early childhood development, you know, giving to your kids between, you know, kindergarten, you know, nursery, kindergarten, one, kindergarten, two. And in exchange of that, you will literally be working. Okay, I've been given the liberty to share my screen. Okay. I probably can share my screen. Somebody's sharing their screen. Okay, I can do that. Great. Perfect, yes. We'd love to see your screen. It makes it easier. So here we go, right? So, you know, here is fundamentally, you know, what we do. Some of you can, if you can see our screen. So here's what fundamentally we do. But some of our team members I don't bore you with this stuff. But this is the demographic that we work with, right? You're looking at farmers, mainly. And here's our model. Here's what really sets us apart, right? So we created this really simple model where we said we want to put the farmers in charge. We want these guys to literally be the folks who are running the show. So you can see here, it's a very simple thing. If you want to benefit from our early childhood development initiatives, you provide farm labor on the cocoa farm. We have a community run cocoa farm. And then, you know, every year we have what we call community accountability days. We come together with the people and then we take those farm revenues. We report to them what we made in sales, profit, losses, you know, whatever. And then we tell them, hey, now at the early childhood side, there are needs that we need to meet. In Ghana, just like many other African countries, even though education at the basic level is supposedly free, in Ghana we have what we call the FQ, free composure, investor, basic education. What people don't realize is that in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, many of these countries, it's really free, but not free. It's free in terms of teacher salary. But in the people in the rural areas where these cocoa farmers are, how did they take care of, you know, books, uniforms? If you're like me, so I grew up on the farm, I saw electricity when I was like 14, 15, when I left the village. You know, my parents are cocoa farmers. My older sisters don't have education because they had to walk to the nearest school to get to the nearest school. You literally have to walk about an hour before you canoe across the river and all of that. My father and my mother, they're good parents. People in the West might say they are our patriarchal, but they're not, they love their daughters. They don't want them to travel through the forest at that time, but if somebody rips them or something, so they would have them at home. And so you may say you're providing free education, but is it really free? It is why 75% and it's why in many of these communities we still have the challenge of child labor because most of these parents will rather keep their kids home, but that's problematic. So what we figured was, you know, the government is already doing something. What if we take community assets to match the stuff that the government does not do? We like to call those expenses non tuition because they are the stuff that are not teacher salaries, non tuition stuff, so books, uniforms and what not. And so after we financially report to the community, then they vote and they make a decision, right? On what to spend those profits on. So this is our broad model. This is our broad model we have here. And this is our center of excellence in Ghana, you know, the 68 car campus we have. You can see our buildings. So you see our girls, right there. You know, it's over seven years we've done a lot. That's a clinic that takes care of all their healthcare needs once they're in school. That's our school, you know, blocks. We have a kindergarten block and all of that. In the middle, you see the community library. I mean, we've grown so much, right? But the forest and everything you see is farms. For the first time, people are working on farms and we're taking agricultural revenues to actually match their social needs. And the impact that we've seen has been phenomenal. So we also piloted this. We were able to do this because, you know, we got some funding from universities like Yale and Penn. I did my undergrad at Penn and I have a master's from Yale, so that was really helpful. But now we know that if we're to go into any new community in anywhere in the world, we can take the same idea, right? With 75,000 USD, we can replicate the same thing. The beautiful thing about this is that in agriculture, we know that some crops are perennial. They're cash crops, cocoa or rava. Some of these crops is just one time and you're good. You grow them and they're good for decades. The revenues will keep coming. You only need to take care of them. That's the power of our model. It's self-sustainable. You don't need to keep bringing in money. Once you set it up, you engage the community. They keep it going. And here are some, you know, some exciting impact you've seen from the results. You can see on the graph side on your right, you know, we're showing that preschool expenses are 100% being matched. Pre-school expenses in red being marked by the farm revenues. And the consequence and the effect you're seeing when you look at school attendance in the government schools at the top, it's around sub 70%. We are consistently showing attendance rate from our pilot of 97%. So this is scalable. How is it scalable? Because we can move into any new community. The government, almost in every rural community, governments have public schools there. The problem is, and they pay their teachers, the problem is they are not functioning as effectively. We're stepping into that cash crop growing community. We take revenues from that farm, whether it's cocoa, rubber, coffee, you name it. And then we replicate the same idea. We take revenues from that cash crop farm to sustain and build out what they are struggling to build. So, you know, we built a lot of stuff around these days and, you know, we've gotten a lot of awards from the Quinn, President Clinton. It's just really exciting growth. We can share more about this later. But where technology comes in for our work, really? And I know it because it's a stuff that, you know, a lot of people are curious to know, hey, so where does technology comes in when you think about your work? You know the part where we talk about providing farm labor, right? For our model to work, people need to work on the farm, really. Because if people don't work on the farm, we don't get the farm revenues. So, we needed to build a system of accountability, right? And measure of accountability and transparency. And how we did that, we created, you know, these kind of barcode PVC cards, right? Now we're thinking of moving them into, you know, RFID. Some of you may know, which is what you call it. Radio Frequency ID. So that, you know, just as you go to the shop and you tap your card a little bit, we're trying to get to that level. But what we do now is, you know, we have these digital cards, smart cards with the PVC barcodes. Every parent, unique ID is tied to them. We collect a lot of data on those cards. Things like their household size, you know, their income size, how many children they have, how many fertilizers they bought, what time of the year did they buy those fertilizers? And you see why these are important. Because outside of those cards, allowing us to be able to track those parental attendance. So on each card, we have like, you know, each parent is supposed to attend the farm 30 times throughout the whole year. So they have a lot of free time to work on their own farms, right? The whole year probably be on the farm like maybe once a day, the whole month. So, you know, for us, that's great because we're able to track, okay, every time you come to farm and you swipe, we know, okay, you have 29 farm attendances remaining. You have 28 farm attendances remaining. Some of us have this, you know, meal swipe for our school lunches and whatnot. Same idea. But the magic of the extra data that we have that we collect from these farmers, as the data builds up, we're able to now apply artificial intelligence and machine learning because we're able to track, okay, at the beginning, here's the kind of data we are getting. Machine learning will tell us over time, okay, you can predict around June, parents are buying, people are buying more fertilizers. So that's very important and they can plan when to buy fertilizers and all of that. Around this time of the month, you know, parents find it easy to attend farms. So for us too, we're able to, you know, calculate when to probably structure farm attendants and get the best in terms of revenues and outputs. So that's how we input in technology. It's been a win-win for both sides, knowing that you can apply technology to build a sustainable innovation to actually improve social needs right there in the community. Yeah. That's so amazing. Thank you so much for this amazing presentation of your initiative. I particularly loved how community is a theme and how you're working to tackle barriers to healthcare and education that's so necessary. And I just do have one follow-up question to that. So you have built this incredible agricultural solution that's inputting technology at the forefront. So if young people are seeing this and they want to create a solution to a problem in their own community, what advice would you have for them? I mean, I think the problem of many of us young people is we don't really... Sometimes we think it's a problem of capital. We like to give all those reasons. We think it's a problem of capital. We think a problem of network. We think, you know, but what I've found, because I grew up in this forest, literally, without seeing electricity for the first 15 years of my life. I didn't have any of those things, but what I had was imagination. So you have to have a wild imagination. It's really weird. I think we are a world where people say they realistic. But when you think about it, nothing mind-blowing was ever done by being realistic. Nobody woke up and think we're going to go to space, but I kid you not, Elon Musk is going there every day. So the human imagination is our greatest asset. And once you can actually believe in that, the rest takes care of itself. And that's all that I've ever done, because I would like to give you advice about how I did it, how I got capital. But as other panelists were answering that question, I realized it's just really imagination. It's imagination and hard work, of course, but once you imagine something, inevitably you're just driven to want it. So just be limitless in what you can imagine and what you can do. And don't stop yourself. Don't, you know, talk yourself out of it. Because the moment you get to that point, the solutions reveal themselves. And then once you are able to imagine the unthinkable, I believe that if you're imagining the thinkable, it's why I still have a beef with people that say, oh, let's do market research, let's do customer analysis, let's do innovation analysis. When you're trying to do what already exists, that's nice. But we need something new and bold. And that's how I was able to do this at the age of, I think I was probably like 21. I was 21 and I said, you know what? I'm going to build my own agro-campus. And everybody said you're insane. It's not possible, you're delusional. Well, now who is delusional, right? So at the end of the day, you have to have bold and imaginative thinking. When you do that, the world opens up. A lot of people will be willing to come together to help you accomplish the unthinkable. We are only limited by what we can imagine. Yeah. That's so inspirational. Thank you so much. I hope that you inspire young people in the audience watching us to follow their own dreams and to never stop pushing the limits of their imagination. Thank you so much for your mini spotlight. We'll now be moving to the Q&A session attendees. I'll be going through the Q&A section. So if you want to post some of your own questions, please feel free as we go along. I do also have some other questions for our panelists and all three of you can feel free to jump in depending on the question, what you are open to answering. The first question that I would have is, how important is connectivity to youth agricultural innovation, particularly as we're talking about connecting young people to this incredible revolution that you all have been involved with, whether it's environmental engineering or the Cocoa360 model or agroforestry, how is it all connecting to this idea of youth and the power of connectivity to youth? How important is that? Anyone can jump in, by the way. Yeah, I think I'll probably start. I think how all of these innovations and brilliant ideas that Eric Lidia shared as well all connect to youth and in terms of also the idea of connectivity, here's an amazing term, right? We were able, first of all, young people are the best generation to literally think of the impossible. Because some of us, you know this, the countries we come from, if you try to do something, especially the old folks, it's like, oh, no, no, man, you gotta relax. Here's how we've always done it. You gotta chill a little bit. If you, the moment you got it from school, they have it gone to your head, hurry up and find a job. So, you know, if you go work in a company, they tell you that you're trying to ruffle some feathers. Here is how we've always done it. And as amazing as our older generation are, think about it, there's something called land behavior. They've learned these things repetitively. So for most, innovation is hard to come by. But we are vibrant. We're energetic. We are bold. And so we're the best generation to come up with these things. It's why you see some of you may forgot, remind them, Mark Zuckerberg is still in his tatties. And he's a bill there. Most of the Snapchat and all these guys, I went to, I've been fortunate because I went to Ivy Lu schools and Cambridge and these schools. I have classmates in their twenties who are billiners, building, delivery, and all these kinds of companies. Uba, you name it, right? Fiscal notes. What does that say? We're the generation that can actually do the unthinkable. That's what makes young people special because our DNA is still pretty much for the most part, not diluted with, here's how we need to do it. The other thing is that we also have the energy. Outside of the innovative mindset, we have energy and we're both. And the last and the final part, even food called 360, we were able to infuse technology because most of our staff who are mainly young people, young men and women, we sat down and we said, you know, what if we could actually apply artificial intelligence and machine learning? Why is that? We're the mainly digital generation. We think about these things. We think about AI and machine learning. I love my father, he's on the farm, but he's not thinking about AI. So we are that generation that can actually think of applying because we are always up to date. You wake up your LinkedIn on this, you're reading about how this has been done and you're able to take all that knowledge to push the frontiers of what is possible. That's what sets our generation apart to align connectivity in this digital age to make the impossible. Yeah. That's amazing, Shadrath. Thank you so much for your insights. Eric or Lydia, do you have any insights of your own? How important is youth in connectivity today and in sustainable agriculture? Maybe there if you wanna answer that. Okay, thank you very much. I can say that our today world as youth, we are very connected. But even though we are connected, we are not exploring enough on how do we innovate our agriculture sector by just employing technologies and innovations which are being there. For example, as I mentioned, we are a fear of gaining agriculture as we see that our parents were used to do a classical of agriculture using panga. But today we need to adopt that innovation and the examples are there. You don't need today to go into the farm for it getting your clubs as my brother Shadrath mentioned. We need just to integrate technology and innovation like greenhouse, hydroponic, heloponic and precision agriculture systems. So those are the connectivity we need to be integrating as youth in agriculture. And this is not limited to the Lulup people. I mean that the most of the Lulup people in our communities, most of us were grown there and we see the daily routine of farming just woke up in the morning, taking who go into the farm, but today it should be look different. We have to integrate by innovation. We just need to go to the office or to the farm. No, you just need to have your computer, your smartphone or software to ensure that your clubs are relegated, to ensure that your market is being in line with what you are doing on the farm. So youth, I can say that we are connected but we are not also at the level that we are exploring enough the innovation into agriculture. Yeah. Perfect, thank you so much for that incredible answer. I have a follow up question to that. I was wondering, do you feel listened to or valued as a young person, as a youth in sustainable agriculture and innovation? And if not, if you don't feel valued or listened to then how do you make people listen? How do you make people recognize the power of our own voices? Either anyone is feel free to answer. I will take this one. What I want to say is like we don't have enough youth in agriculture. We don't have the enough youth involved in that field. What I say is that it's possible that we could be in different fields, like it could be tech or other fields that we can actually work on to make things better. To make it work more in agriculture because more youths are not involved in this field. So if we don't try and if we don't get involved and if we don't get stay connected, how are we supposed to come up with all the solutions that are for the problems we're facing currently? So I think we should just, more youths should be involved in agriculture now because we can see that more youths are not in this. This needs to be our thing I think for to make all the SDG goals possible like to end hunger and for all of those problems. I think we need not just stay connected but like actually work on it and find solutions especially at this moment. I think we need to cooperate and work more and I think this field needs more youth. I completely agree youth participation engagement is so critical. Thank you so much, Lydia. Shadrach or Eric, do you have any thoughts on being listened to or being valued as a young person? Okay, thank you. I can say yes, I'm evaluated but especially because it's very difficult, especially I'm from Lolo area and most of them, as I mentioned, the people they are farmers but they still some dual traditional farming. So when a good day has to convince people, I have this innovation. I want you to just think of how you can set this set of sensor in your farm so that you're going to make irrigation schedule without going in the farm every day. It is very difficult. They take you as a crazy idea but day by day by setting the operation model of just showing people how to do things and mostly engage local readers because they have a great interest to them. So when we work together closely with local leaders they help us to engage people to understand that youth are there to make change and farmers start to move from all the farming to the modern farming. And I can say that you are valued but not a hundred percent because there is still gap to be till the end. Yeah. I completely agree. There's still a lot of work to be done with following youth but I also really appreciate your answer. Shadraq, do you have anything to add? Yeah, I mean, I think, of course, you know, absolutely. It's important that the voices are heard. One thing I do know for sure is because we're such an exciting and very audacious generation and we're always buzzing with ideas and all of that. There can be the temptation to also sometimes throw out of the window the brilliant community knowledge, the brilliant indigenous knowledge, all those traditions that are very deeply embedded within communities and within the settings that we all work within. And so, Cocoa 3-6, for instance, one thing that I probably think a lot of people know us for is community engagement. It's something that we've been so super intentional about in terms of always making sure that community voices supersedes any external voices. Any community and setting that we're working, we always try to strike try it. If you go on our board right now, you probably saw it in the deck, I pull that. Whereas a lot of organizations have like, say, just board of governors or board of directors and typically people living in the capital city or probably outside in the Western country, no. We split our board into partners of facilitating board and there's an implementing board. The implementing board is actually people within the community that have that community knowledge and all of that. They have 70% of decision-making power and then 30% which is for the facilitators. What do they facilitate with their ideas and their money? But in terms of how to actually do things, people have been living their lives in a setting for a long time. Even if you're bringing in something, you have to see yourself as a facilitator. So our voices are important, but oftentimes I realize that the push and this is even my own experience. When I finished paying and I went back to Ghana, I thought, you know what, hey, I really degree. I'm gonna come show you guys how we need to do this. I have my money, I have my ideas. You all should better sit down and listen to me. How's that arrogant and naive, right? Probably burden on stupid. And I don't forget though, we sit down with the community members and they're like, man, you don't know nothing. You grew up here, you're our own. We're gonna show you how we need to do this. So we have to literally create what we call a village committee. And while the ideas I had were innovative and all good for my own people, because I grew up in the setting, ultimately it was respecting the voices of the people and how they want the idea, whatever it is to be refined and to even eventually be done. That's what made my voice also to be heard eventually. So if every time you're receiving some pushback, it's always important to take a step back and think, why am I getting the pushback? Am I acting like I know it all? Am I acting like, you know, when we think about the savior mentality, savior complex, it's always easy to put the white in front of it, but please, there can also be the black savior. In fact, there can also be, you can be a Ghanaian and do something in your community and be the Ghanaian savior. You can be from the community and be a savior complex. It's not just a white savior complex. Anybody, any human being that things, they know better than another person in terms of how something to should be done, always bothers on that danger. So for our voices to be heard, we need to respect the voices that already exist. We need to see them as allies and build a change together. Thank you so much Adirak, I completely agree. We still need to recognize the needs of communities who are already there and who already have their own ideas and respect is at the forefront of that. So thank you. We actually have a question from the audience. So I'll just read it. They say in my country, agriculture industry still plays a key role of economic development. However, farmers in Vietnam still recognize the importance of sustainability in agricultural development. However, youth currently are easily attracted to new industries with more benefits for their own futures such as services, engineering, et cetera. So the question is, could you share with us something about how to raise the unconnected youth or young people to engage more about the importance of agriculture and trigger them to contribute more despite the fact that they not be as connected to agriculture as the older populations? Anyone can feel free to answer. Okay, thank you. Maybe I'll go first. First thing we need to do, we just need to show up people that especially youth that agriculture works. We have different platforms today, social medias. And the reason why those youth are joining other careers is because they don't have no models who are performing in agriculture. They just feel barriers in their families, in their local communities. And then they say, no, I have to jump out of this. I have to go to engineering. But if we have the youth who are successful in agriculture and then we engage them to tell the story to the youth out there that it is possible in agriculture. And this is a very big opportunity for us. Let's do agriculture influential things on social media so that people will come and they will enjoy. And they will see that in agriculture, there is a potential instead of just escaping out and going to the other sectors which they literally say they are good than agriculture, but it's not true. That's amazing. I completely agree, Eric. Shadrach or Lydia, do you have any thoughts on this question? I mean, I can chime in. I think adding to what Eric said, just you need to build awareness, right? You can only be what you see. I did undergrad in, during my undergrad days in the US, you have to do permit on like many countries where you can go straight into medical school. And for you to be a competitive medical school applicant, you literally have to have shadowed. So you literally have to like work around with the doctor to see how they're operating and all of that. In fact, some people go so far as going to other places to do global health brigades and whatnot. Why is that important? It builds that awareness. You get to know whether, you know, this is really something I can be. It's different to read about it and to see it in the news. And that's amazing. But can we also take it a step further where we actually let people experience these things? In our campus in Ghana, we always have a lot of young people. They're surprised when they visit us in the Rural and remote sites and they see that greenery and all of that. They see the farmers on the farm. They're like, wait, this is not as bad as I thought. Like you could actually make a lot of money from this. So, you know, we can see what we can be. First of all, at Greek, it's hard for people to venture into because no matter how you put it, I mean, now we have urban agriculture, hydroponics, aquaponics and all these exciting stuff. But you think about it, a greater part of it just is still in the rural areas, right? And so when you think about it, how many people live in the rural areas? Most people are living in the city. So how do we build that awareness of getting people to actually go there? Because most people have actually not experienced what it is to farm, what it's actually to be on the farm and be holding the machete and all of that to actually understand, wait, this is something I can do for a living. The other part though, is the importance of technology, which is why I'm glad that this is happening, right? Because if young people can understand that when you think agriculture, you just don't need to be like, you know, how am I, I grew up in the farm where my parents are, you know, they just wear like, you know, the tattered clothes and you will wear our tick boots, hold them, cut them, I say, you just weed all there and your palms are etching. But there is also an agriculture part, their companies start-ups, like Grow One. In fact, it was started by this amazing Ethiopian woman. It's called Grow, I believe Grow Agriculture, that's their name. But, you know, what they do is called Grow Intelligence. So they are an AI platform, climate, you know, an intelligence platform that provides, you know, data for climate smart agriculture. And I Google it and I'm seeing, oh my goodness, they're raising money. They're raising, they recently raised about $50 million. Well, if you see that, you want to go into agriculture, right? And so seeing all of that, because let's face it, at the end of the day, we go into things when we see the money, right? And so when you see startups like, you know, Grow Intelligence, when you see startups like even like co-cultures where no profit, but we've done fairly well in terms of raising about 3.5 million USD. When you know some of these things and you see that it's actually possible to go to the company and power a lot of people. And right now, given the state of the world post COVID, startups that veer more into the agriculture industry are going to win. So you could see them. Now people are building platforms. There's this company in Nigeria called Trade Depot that recently raised $110 million. What are they taking the money to do? They're connecting agriculture, they're called Connecting Farmers and retailers of food products to, you know, restaurants and hotel managers who need those producers. So they've literally built a whole procurement and a logistic chain. You see this thing I'm talking about is exciting your brain. Why? Because it's money. It's what speaks to you. You go to school because you want to make money. But guess what? Not all of us needs to be holding machetes and be staying on the farm then. And so when you think about it, Vietnam industry could actually be much more boosted when such startups are built. Why? Because the farmers who may not have had the opportunity to get that kind of education, but the young people have these young people to be building all these agri-tech companies that will make it possible for them to now have access and easy pathways for them to sell their products. So it's a win-win for everybody. That's what I encourage a younger generation to move more into. You create more jobs and you also make it much more easier for those who didn't have the opportunities but then you and I have had to gain the education. I would say like, it would be the same for me to have all this education and be waking up every day and be holding the cutlass on the farm. I've wasted my parents. Why my parents sent me to school? But they didn't want to kick me out of agriculture. I'm still in agriculture. I love agriculture, right? That's why we bought Cocoa 3D C and we're driving the impact that we have. So keeping that broad view of agriculture, letting everybody know that it's as lucrative as building a Facebook. More young people are going to jump into that space. Yeah. I am completely off your incredible insights. I totally agree. And I think that the ways that you mentioned of raising awareness totally makes sense. And it is a lucrative venture that young people should definitely get more involved with. Thank you so much for the question. I can see that we're almost at the end of our session. I just wanted to ask if any of the panels have any final thoughts or advice for young people who are interested in sustainable development and or sustainable agriculture, sorry. And I also encourage everyone to join Generation Connect and follow us on all social media. I am posting it in the chat below so you can connect. But yeah, does anyone have any final comments for the audience or any advice? Any advice for the people of the audience? Hello? Yeah, we can hear you. Do you have any last wishes or words? Yes, of course. Okay, thank you. First of all, thank you for this opportunity to share what you're doing to the world and saying that environment needs us. And we need the same environment to live in a good condition to have a sound health. So we are not going to escape from our environment, but we need to work on environment. So that gives back what you have given to it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Eric, Shadraq, Lydia, any final thoughts? I don't have my advice, but I'm going to make a suggestion because if we have more international organizations just like Generation Connect under ITU, I think more youth will be more into that field because as we can see, the Generation Connect is more involved in even recently in Olympic-style innovation robotics competitions. Just like this, if I know there are tech, I meant climates-based international organizations that are also working on youth, but we need more just like Generation Connect for the youth to be more coordinated and more involved in that field for it to be more successful in agriculture and climate or environmental related fields in order for the youth to be successful and more involved to make the youth more a solution maker. I think this would be the best. That's awesome. Thank you so much, Lydia. Unless we have any other final insights, thank you so much, everyone, for this incredible panel. I'm so grateful to all of our panelists. As I said before, please follow us on Generation Connect throughout different social media platforms listed in the chat. And yeah, I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you, everyone. Thank you, Lydia. Yeah. Recording stopped.