The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> HANNA PISHCHIYK: Hi, everyone. My name is Hanna from Digital Grassroots thank you for joining the session of Technology and Innovation Challenge for Gender Equality. We'll be starting shortly. First of all, could you tell me can everyone hear me?
(Captioner standing by).
>> HANNA PISHCHIYK: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining. You can find the session notes in the chat. Can everyone see?
(Captioner standing by).
>> Hello, we're here to talk from a very diverse perspective. We understand the main essence of this session is to really dive into what are the main issues from our community which is youth. Here at the IGF, it's very important for us to understand what these main issues are. We are a part of the digital grassroots, part of the gender coalition by UN women and as part of this action coalition, we have been doing a lot of work and committed to bridging the gender divide in ICT as a whole, and one of the ways of doing this is really analyzing what are the main issues that surround gender equality with regards to technology and innovation. So, thank you everybody very much for joining, and I'm going to pass it on to Esther now. Thank you.
(Applause).
>> ESTER MWEMA: Thank you all so much for coming. Yeah. Thank you for being patient. We went to the wrong briefing room. I'm sorry about that. Thank you for being here, and as Uffa shared it's an interactive session. We're here to network. Digital Grassroots is quite unconventional and try not to get stuffed up. We're going to try to have breakouts to meet each other and discuss what we're doing in technology and innovation.
So basically, we have our brief introduction like Uffa shared, we're the only youth group in the Action Coalition for Technology for Gender Equality and what we found is there is a big divide between what was at the high level and what happens at the grassroots and part of this is because there isn't a lot of communication between what happens at the top and at the bottom, and for innovation to take place, it's very important that we include the grassroots and that we're able to communicate and talk to one another. So, I'm trying to see how this would work because we're in a very inflexible room, but we're going to get started and we're just going to have like two rounds of sessions where we're all going to get up and talk to someone we do not know, we did not come with, and share what we do in technology and innovation and gender equality because this is after all, a networking session, and we can't take up all the time and space. So, we're going to get started, and I'll just would like all of you to get up and identify someone who you don't know. For five minutes. It could be groups of three, it could be groups of two, but just go around the room and find someone you don't know, exchange contact and what you do, and then we're going to come back in plenary, and then we're going to do it again. Two rounds of that. Then we're going to close and see a way we can all collaborate on technology and innovation for gender equality. Sounds good? Okay. Let's get started. Okay. Find someone, someone you don't know. Thank you. Five minutes.
(small group).
>> ESTER MWEMA: Two more minutes. Two more minutes. Make sure you exchange contacts. Two more minutes.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You may be seated.
Thank you!
Thank you so much! How is it going? Hello? How are you doing?
Okay, one minute to wrap up. I've got a request for one minute to wrap up. How many of us have met a new person, got a new contact? Oh, that's good! It's working, right! That's good!
Thank you. I'm glad you're able to interact. We're going to have a second round but I want to acknowledge our online participants also doing breakout rooms online. We're going to have a second round briefly, but I just want to get a feel of the room. One or two or three people to just share if they have met someone interesting about technology and innovation and anything new they have learned. Over to you.
>> All right, so if I understand that your conversations must have been super interesting. That's good. Remember the essence of this session is for us to network and to learn more about the topic and to discuss with ourselves. Before we do another round of networking, if anyone has anything interesting that they would like to share with the general room, you can raise your hand and we'll pass the mic to you. Anyone? From your conversations, the first round of networking, anything interesting that someone said? Anyone at all? I can pass. Okay.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, hello, everyone. My name is Allen a telecommunications engineer. During the breakout room, I happen to have a discussion with a couple of members of parliaments, so our discussion was mainly on how the government through parliament can come in and leverage on technology and innovation. So, we're getting deeper and deeper, but unfortunately enough wasn't enough, but that's basically what we were going through. Thank you, Uffa.
>> UFFA MODEY: Thank you very much, Allen. That's amazing. We're going to jump into another round of networking, and this time around we'll give a bit more time because clearly more time is needed. All right, so again someone that you've not talked to previously, you have not talked to in day one, so someone that looks interesting to you, anyone at all, walk up to them and introduce yourself and share your thoughts and opinions, suggestions, comments, questions about technology and innovation with regards to gender equality.
Two are or three groups or four or more but try to have it as small as possible to have close‑knit conversations. Another round starting now. Please feel free to interact. Thank you.
Two more minutes. Two more minutes.
One more minute! One more minute!
Okay. Can we start to round up our conversations. I'm going to give you about one or two more minutes to share contacts, to take down notes, to round up on your conversations and I will check again in one minute. Thank you.
Amazing!
Just also to say we acknowledge our online participants!
>> ESTER MWEMA: Thank you so much! I hope that was useful. I know networking sessions can be very tricky, but I also want be to acknowledge our online participants and just give them a moment as well to see what's been happening in our breakout rooms on our online session.
Let's see. So, just a minute. Can we get the online participants? Perfect! I'll give the floor to Hanna, if you can share what's been happening there and any feedback from the networking session there? Hanna, over to you.
>> HANNA PISHCHIYK: Can you hear me?
>> ESTER MWEMA: Yes, we can hear you.
>> HANNA PISHCHIYK: Great. (echo).
Thank you so much. We're excited to join you. We had a connection for the guide and now I'm just going to ask any participants for questions or comments, you can ask them to the team or whatever you would like to suggest.
>> ESTER MWEMA: I can see the chat there. I guess we are glitching. Yeah. Let's see the chat. Just a second. We want to make sure that everyone is heard because not everyone could make it in person, so it's very important that we get to interact online. Hanna, anything from that side? She's muted.
>> UFFA MODEY: Thank you once again, everyone. Before I go to closing, I would like to pass to everyone here present in case anyone has any general comments, questions, or suggestions that they would like to share from their conversations. We have a hand raised. Please, thank you.
>> HANNA PISHCHIYK: I think right now we don't have questions or comments. We have no comments. Thank you so much that's great to be able to join you and have time.
>> UFFA MODEY: Thank you so much. Over to you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you so much. I'm excited to have a discuss. I'm Lily, Ghana youth and spoke with about what we can do with regards to innovation and gender is very interesting. The work he does is he's a social psychologist, I think that is interesting thinking about it in a session with technology. I asked what we could do with regards to social psychology and just getting more and more connected and just the idea of gender and actually technology. And what he said that stood out for me is that anything that has to do with technology or innovation has an impact on community, so he feels like if you want to make sure we have an online space that is actually in the service of public needs and especially with regards to gender, we have to have governance of policy that makes sure that we are guiding how interaction is done online so that we do not perpetuate or augment injustices. That is so spot on, right, because thinking about psychology and thinking about how even that relates to the engagement of people on the online space. That was what stood out for me. Yeah. Thank you.
>> UFFA MODEY: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you very much. That was very useful. Again, before closing, opening the floor again for one more comment or suggestion? Anyone?
Okay. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining this session. Once again, our organization Digital Grassroots is hosting this session as part of the Generation Equality Forum. We are Action Coalition in the Generation Equality Forum by the UN Women, and this forum is aimed at ensuring and bridging the gender ‑‑ the global digital divide with regards to gender equality and we have made a commitment to work in the space of five years to see what we can do as an organization to contribute to this work. It's been a lot, and it's been very useful to do this kind of event that enables people to think critically about the issues surrounding gender and innovation with regards to technology. Thank you very much and we have our flyers here for Digital Grassroots, so if you want to learn more about what we do and how you can support our work, please feel free to take one of our flyers. I'm going to pass it to Esther to take final words. Thank you very much, everyone.
(Applause).
>> ESTER MWEMA: Thank you so much. How many of us met two new people and exchanged contacts? Oh, that's great! And I hope that we can continue because what we recognize as Digital Grassroots is that there is a lot happening in siloes and what happens is we need to bridge the gap, whether we're working policy, academia or on the advocacy side. We need to bridge that, and as Digital Grassroots this networking session was really about creating that space to interact and just share, and we are a youth‑led and female‑led organization, so the work we do really is bridging the divide between the grassroots and high level between digital literacy, advocacy, digital rights. Thank you so much for coming. We would like to connect with all of you, so please grab a flyer before you leave. Yeah. Come to our booth in the Booth Village. Thank you.