 Welcome to WSIS Forum 2018. I am delighted to be joined by two ladies who have done a lot of work on using ICT as a tool for women's empowerment. Ladies, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having us. So I'll start with you, Ayanna Samuels. You are a high-level track facilitator for civil society and who is at WSIS Forum 2018 to chair a session on gender mainstreaming. You were also a panelist on a session in Women in Stem and you know exactly what you are talking about because you are an aerospace engineer and you are also the only female in Jamaica who is also a rocket scientist. Yes, yes, certainly. And thank you very much for having me, Charlotte. It's an honour to be here. We feel very passionately within the Caribbean and within the she leads its social enterprise which I represent that there is so much work that still needs to happen as it concerns gender equity in Stem. And so we want to be a part of the solution. There are a myriad of issues that still obtain from successful women in this arena not being assumed to have earned it but to be some anomaly from the norm. They're not in a place where they ought to be. And so when there are networking opportunities we often are not invited and when there are, let's say, opportunities to clinch that position at the very top, it doesn't tend to be a reality where we're always seen as equal candidates for that. And so what we want to do is create a change where it matters the most which is between zero and a zero and the young teenage years where we want our girls to know that they deserve a seat at the table and they can be whatever they want to be. And this is something that runs through my veins and I'm very passionate about and so I'm happy to be here to lend the Caribbean voice to what we can do to solve this issue. It's very much about building confidence in young ladies and women, isn't it? Now Nicole Peter Patterson, you are the head, the co-founder in fact of a social enterprise called She Leads It and you've been doing a lot of work in the Caribbean and beyond I suppose to do more for women's empowerment, especially on the economic level. Absolutely. Thank you very much Halith and thank you so much for being here. We're really excited to be working with candidates like Ayanna Samuels who are huge experts with their expertise in leading the way for empowering women and in fact young girls. Not only in the Caribbean but from other developing parts of the world as well as other parts of the world. What my commitment is as a co-founder along with my colleague Bridget Lewis of She Leads It is about empowering women exactly as Ayanna has said to take hold of the fact that there is no enterprise, there is no industry where they do not in fact have a seat at the table and they do not have an equal voice. How we're doing that through working with initiatives such as Girls in ICT Day, other projects that we're looking to be a part of such as Equals or led by WISIS, led by the ITU and through the platform at WISIS is to build that pipeline of girls who are coming into having that comfort level with working and using the different tools and technology. And that's why it's so important to be in a global multi-stakeholder platform like WISIS isn't it? You meet people, you form relationships as a whole, I suppose you learn, you share knowledge as well. Right, absolutely. One of the things that I always say is you can't be what you can't see and WISIS presents that inflection point to take stock of where we are, where we're going and what models exist that we can emulate. And already I have seen that I have been inspired and my hope is that I also can do that for others who are live streaming and taking the proceedings in. And the fact that we would be able to be a part of the change we want to see completely inspires us. And so yes, we feel very strongly about that. Because women's empowerment is a joint effort isn't it? Absolutely. We also need to have men at the table as well. But what we're saying is that we need to have a fair chance just as Ayanna is pointing out because there could be assumptions that could be made that women do not face those qualifications. I think Ayanna can also share with us some very interesting statistics from work that was done in the Caribbean in St. Lucio with regards to some of those factors. Absolutely. Now this is where it gets really serious wherein there are reports that shall we say dictate that in terms of management positions the Caribbean has higher than normal figures. But what tends to happen is that that is middle management. It doesn't represent management that's making the decisions and making those hiring decisions for those who can move the organization forward. Specifically in respect of my research into gender inequity in St. Lucio, we found that there are metrics which if not catered to Charlotte can result in female inclusion in knowledge capacity events completely being lower than it should be. Something like providing access to daycare facilities, providing safe transportation. All those aspects become game changers if put in place to change things. There are also significant issues in respect of access to credit. We have women who are still being asked to come back with their husbands if they go to achieve or apply for a loan. And when they say they don't have a loan they're being asked to come back with their fathers. These are real issues that are being faced. We have interns who are being asked to, oh the school is asked to return with a man instead of a woman because when they wanted an ICT intern they weren't thinking of a girl. And so these are real and present 2018 issues which are on the table which the world doesn't know of. And it's hard to create change if we don't have hard data on the issues that are being faced. And it's easy to think okay this is a moot point but it absolutely isn't. There's still a lot of work to be done and we're passionate about being a part of that agenda. Ayanna and Nicole, thank you very much. And thank you for all the work you're doing to include more women into the workforce. Absolutely and I just want to make a final statement with regards to our upcoming Girls in ICT Day hackathon which is going to be held with ITU. This year we're having it held in five countries across the Caribbean, Guyana, St. Vincent, Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. And we're looking at having out reached over a thousand girls that would participate hand on creating products with IT. So watch this space. Yes indeed, watch this space, that's right. Alright, thank you very much. Thank you for having us.