 Welcome to CBS 2018 here in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, where we're joined in the studio today by G1 Park, who is the co-founder for Codefill, and she's one of the young innovators here at the Global ICT capacity building symposium here. So G1, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you for inviting me. Now tell us a little bit about your project. You've been nominated for a young innovator award here. Just perhaps you can tell us a little bit about what your project Codefill is about. Sure, of course. So Codefill is an ed tech non-profit that aims to empower rural low income students in the Philippines through digital literacy skills. And so we've been working in the Philippines since 2016 to improve educational inclusion and overcome some of the geographical, economical barriers that deny millions of young Filipinos from accessing digital literacy skills, especially online. So we built capacity in three different ways. Our first is to conduct computer science workshops in the islands of northern Samar, which is one of the poorest islands in the Philippines. And so we create curriculum that's partnered with local partners, including teachers and students. And our second initiative is called Typefill, and it's a free educational software that teaches students how to type properly with all tent fingers. Because we realized that when we were in the Philippines trying to teach computer science, a huge impediment to learning how to code was that the students were typing with two fingers. So we took a step back and developed this software that can be accessed for students without internet as well. Great. I think I probably would need that as well, because I'm still typing with two or actually maybe four fingers, but certainly not ten. And that's so you've got two, and you've got one more, is that right as well? One more is we also hold an innovation summit, basically a conference for young high school and college students in remote islands in the Philippines. And so we connect them with mentors in the IT industry from Manila, and also challenge them to create technological solutions that their community identified. So really trying to empower students to use technology to improve their lives and their communities. And how's it been going? What's the uptake been like so far? So we've trained about 150 students in the island of Northern Samar, and we've conducted an innovation summit also in the regional capital of Northern Samar, Qatarman, for 150 participants. And right now our type fill software through a partnership with the National Department of ICT in the Philippines is being rolled out at over 1,600 community e-centers across the country. So that's basically it's been really fortunate for us to have so many partners on ground who have been receptive to our ideas and very willing to collaborate with us. So we're very thankful for that. Well, I mean, one thing I do know about the Philippines is it's very spread out. Exactly. What about connectivity? Have you had any issues with that? Yeah, actually that's one of the biggest issues that we face is I'm actually according in 2015 a study was done and around 80% of public schools in the Philippines do not have access to it. Or have very little access to internet, and that was the case for the schools where we conducted these capacity building workshops in Northern Samar. There was often no electricity even, and so there was actually a generator being used to power the computers during our workshop hours. So that's why we decided to develop this offline curriculum that can be used offline. For example, our HTML and CSS curriculum can be used offline and then can be uploaded online afterwards after the students finish the curriculum, for example. And our type fill software, we know there's a lot of typing softwares out there. It's not a novel idea, but the fact that we've kind of tailored that for offline communities so that it's accessible for offline and online students. That's kind of how we're trying to overcome the connectivity barrier in the Philippines. And are you looking to replicate this globally as well? Yeah, so we definitely see this model being translated to other contests, especially other small island states, for example, or other island states as well. Maybe the Dominican Republic here, because our type fill software is very customizable to the local region and the model that we're using I think is definitely something that can be used in other countries as well. Great. And just in terms of this symposium itself, we're here, as you said, in the Dominican Republic. Is your first time here to the Dominican Republic? It's my first time in the Caribbean, so I'm very excited. I wish my Spanish was better, but sadly it's not so. No problem. And just your impressions, your key takeaways from the conversations that you've been hearing? I'm really interested in the dialogue going on with lifelong learning and the complementary soft skills to technical skills, because at Code Fill we also really value the soft skills in addition to the coding and typing skills. And that's something that we try to highlight through our innovation summit by having students collaborate together, present their ideas to judges. So that's how we're working there. So it's really great to hear that dialogue, listen to experts who have so much experience in this area. Great. Thank you very much for joining us in the studio and very much good luck with this project and with the award, etc. And we hopefully will catch up with you again sometime in the future. OK, thank you so much.