The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual 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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>> We have colleagues joining. So let me see how can we find you a seat. Oh, please. So I hope you all have seats. I see we have two colleagues that don't have chairs. So I will quickly ask my colleagues if they can bring them. But I think we'll need to formally start.
Finally, good afternoon. It's so nice to see you all. My colleagues after almost 2 years of online continuous corporation that we had. So for the record, my name is Ania and the focal point for the regional new IGFs and this is the traditional rise coordination session an opening network meeting happening from all NRIs and all interested stakeholders in the NRIs. The main goal is to understand what has been done so far and what needs to be done in the coming months and next year especially to have stronger NRIs and with that stronger Internet Governance ecosystem.
A number of NRIs are present here in the room physically and it's really a wonderful experience after such a long time. I know that a bigger number of the NRI colleagues is present online. So special greeting goes from all of us to our colleagues that are present online. You are certainly missed that you're not here, but I hope that next year, we will have really large in person meeting for all the NRIs.
Before we start, we have in the next little bit less than 90 minutes quite an interesting and complex agenda. We are, I think, very important at this meeting to have with us join Ms. Maria Francesca from the office of technology. The title is very new to all of us. The road for digital corporation for the secretary general has been very important to the NRI as well as the formal governance. The NRI even responded to the open consultation that were associated with the practices of the (?) digital corporation and its implementation. So let me please give the floor to the tech and we're waiting for the opening remarks and then we'll proceed with the agenda.
>> Ladies and gentlemen, communities of the internet governance forum, it's a pleasure and an honor to be here with you all. From the fact you are organic grass roots to cases where national digital policies were changed as a result of NRIs meetings and about how you collectively cooperate as a global network. And I had the pleasure to be a part of one NRI process myself thanks to the kind invitation of the national IGF originally held a few weeks ago. I connect all this with persons and faces and I'm here to listen to you. And it's a true honor for me. And as you know, the secretary general road map as Ania was saying for digital corporation calls for forging linkages between the IGF and NRIs. The office of the secretary general second working alongside with other UN agencies is tasked to coordinate the efforts to insure that the road map is implemented. And now with the secretary general common agenda, we have broadened the risen toward building a digital compact if 2023. And the NRIs contribution is essential. I highlight this for you because I believe that the potential of moving the stakeholder process at local level as such as yours is really important. This processes have proven to be critical for efforts towards making the internet more robust, resilient, secure, safe, affordable and accessible for all people. The road map is also clear that it's effective implementation depends on effective national level assessment and deployment. I hope we can start expanding our relationship and I invite you indeed, to join the road maps implementation teams of champions and key constituents. And to contribute your ideas in the process of building the consensus around the core principle of the digital compact. And I invite you to keep us posted about updates from your respective regions and communities in the same way as we do to give you our best to keep you informed about our work. I especially invite you to tell us what to do to insure IGF processes in your countries and regions are strengthened more effective and more presence across all walks of society. I know my colleagues in the IGF secretariat are at your disposal to hear ideas to work with your own implementation. I would like to add that the office of the secretary general and technology also sends ready to respond to your needs whenever possible in its own activities area. And I encourage you finally to focus on what concrete steps could be taken to have a more effective IGF ecosystem composed of many elements and among these strong, sustainable locally and globally recognized and supported NRIs. And I look forward about your very engaging dialogue about to happen.
>> Thank you very much. First for finding time to be here, but first of all, thank you for the continued support to the NRIs which I think goes beyond just being present in certain sessions. Your members of your team, I see that colleagues Jason and (?) are here. They have been very kind in cooperating with the NRIs with regards to their processes and we very much appreciate it. That's how the good corporation always starts. You have to know each other to understand what you're doing and then from there, good action always starts. Thank you very much. I know you have a very busy schedule at this year's IGF. I really appreciate your time that you're here. You're most welcome to stay as long as your schedule allows, of course, and at any time you need to leave, feel free to leave.
So the agenda for this session is in a manner about a number of virtual meetings since the beginning of this year. It was decided that this year's session will focus on discussing two major areas. The first one relates to overall sustainability of the NRIs. There are a couple of aspects we will discuss. The first one relates to financial sustainability and I do think it's very important just because the processes that we're running are obviously very valuable. But they also come with costs. We need to understand where funding can come from. How they work together to streamline the process.
And then the second part of this session will relate to the work of the NRIs becoming more policy impactful. Not necessarily at a local level, but I think also at the global level. What was mentioned about the road map, that's one of the processes where the NRI's can play a very important role. Some countries and regions NRI process that exists is really the only opportunity to understand in the amount of stakeholder environment what the digital policy is about in terms of the priority for local community.
With that, the format of the session will be very open as we agreed. So it's up to you to raise your hand and speak. I have a microphone that I can pass on to all of you when you start speaking and there is also this standing microphone here. (?) will also give us her microphone. I think we'll manage to have a quick action on this.
Sustainability of NRIs is our first area and I invite to you comment on that. Come up with some sort of action plan for the next year that all the NRIs can work on incorporating and hopefully implement. How do you feel in terms of your financial resources for your processes? I especially refer to the context of the pandemic and turning completely to online or turning to hybrid meeting which from the experience of the IGF can come with even higher costs than when you speak about what was before traditional on site meeting. I especially would like to put the emphasis on how the international community can support the NRIs or you happy with what is already there in the presence. Let me just mention that there are a couple of outlets that are giving grants to the NRIs and there is a procedure established. So in that sense, the IGF support for example, does give grants to developing countries related processes for national and regional IGFs with a certain amount of grant, I am glad that Jennifer is also there. She's also carrying ahead of IGF coordinator. ISOC foundation as well. I think ICANN has been very strong supporter of the NRIs. The IGF secretariat has been given financial grants to the NRIs and developing countries. So that's mechanism that we know that we can apply for. But obviously it is not for everything. Many of these resources that are new and existing in international ecosystem are actually in their eligibility criteria related to developing countries. And that's a little bit of a challenge from experience of I'll just speak from my experience as the NRIs focal point. You have very specific example where you have covering Europe or you have a number of developed countries and again, there are a number of developing countries and how do you differentiate there where regional IGF would be there for funding has been a subject for discussion with some processes. So with putting this on a table, I invite you all to brainstorm a bit and how can we streamline a little bit better the funding that's been coming from the international ecosystem. And then we can move on to discussing about mobilizing the local community to support better the NRIs. So you can maybe raise your hands. I see we already have a raced hand. I also want to invite our colleagues present online just raise their hands. They would show maybe Zoom on the screens that are in front of me. Thank you. Maybe we can start from ‑‑
>> Thank you very much. I am from the seven African country of south Africa. I think in terms of our areas in our countries and looking at financial solutions there, but more specifically looking at the COVID context and the current pandemic which we're in, in southern Africa can say our perspective is looking at digital infrastructure. So with addressing the issue of funding, we would essentially look for context of infrastructure and addressing the need of creating transformative transparent systems which either currently don't exist in many areas especially rural areas or inaccessible particularly for African youth. And so I do believe in terms of NRI structures that when it comes to accessibility, that would be the key focal area for there to be financial distribution to insure that there is an equal accessible compliant and transparent Internet for. By strong support to be able to create equal opportunity for bridging technological skills gaps which are significant in the southern African countries and due to the COVID crisis, the education and availability to education where schools were the primary often first point of contact with any technological device or education, the pandemic and quarantine times broke that system breaking in many cases including my own home town where I'm from complete access to education where for months, there was absolutely no educational structure due to inability to access resources. So definitely in terms of if we were to look at financial infrastructure, we would be looking at sustainable development towards infrastructure and to see how we would be able to coordinate transparently collaborative compliance towards funding NRIs and actually providing digital access to the internet for all. So in the sense, yes. I do believe that digital infrastructure would be the primary focal point for us in southern Africa in terms of financial stability NRIs and look forward to using this as the game changer to the development of Internet and governance in southern Africa.
>> Thank you very much for sharing these points. Maybe I'll invite you also to comment on these points and share your points as well. Michael, I'll give you my microphone.
>> Michael: Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here. I know we have missed meeting like this in the last couple of two years now? Yes. Two years now. So basically a follow up on the (?) by our sister from south Africa. When it comes to NRI funding and holding our initial IGF meetings, it's been a challenge. In the sense if you look at the funding we request for and activities that are involved in coordinating and eventual holding original IGF, it's more expensive one aspect of coordinating and also later on to talk about holding it. So basically our topic, I will speak it in (?). The first one I think there should be a condition that the NRI secretariat like the one you coordinate in the sense it should put in a law or regulation that only allow you to fund activities that do not span beyond September. Why am I trying to say this? We have discussions where a country hosts the original IGF and another one hosting in December. Show that process done? So if you put say every NRI that needs to be funded must submit and hold the NRI before September to give chance for the original (?) and subregional one business is squint to the original one and the global one because we can't have with our NRI taking original IGF taking place post the global IGF because to me, that is an important structure deficit in terms of why should a nation one take place after the global one? So the second point is about funding is about when we hold these online meetings? I know we have been trying to see how affected. Now the issue comes in those ones that want to participate in the Zoom space, in the online space. I will give an example of Africa. Most people want to be (?) attending a meeting. How does NRI, national IGF able to fund or to (?) those participating where you have an audience of about 80. By the time you are having I meeting, only three come online. Last week were supposed to have under arrest original IGF, but because we had put records that there were not investments of data used because it is submission of interest.
What happened we start the meeting only about 22 and reduce that more than 300 and according to our (?), you can only start the meeting if at least 70% have registered and have come online. So we ended up (?) and we hold our original IGF or we postpone it to next year. Just to come back to the point, as much as we seek for funding, we also look at funding participants as long as the meeting is taking place online. Other participants who want to be part of the meeting, they can't afford to use OMGB for 1‑hour meeting. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much, Michael. Maybe I'll take and then I would like to give it over to Plantina and then Eliana.
>> Thank you, colleagues. I just most agree with Michael's point. Just to start off with I'll indicate where the South Africa government forum gets its funding. We're funded by the (?) funders, but we do source funding externally. I must just applaud the IGF secretary because they have done their part financially in our funding. Also must come back to the point that was made by my colleague Michael. There is value in putting up timelines as far as when we can have our IGF for funding purposes. So if we're going to have our IGF around the same timelines, if it does not make sense as far as my engagements with particularly is that I need to submit a report. So when do I submit an IGF support if I am having an IGF meeting around the same timelines as that global IGF. I think I'm glad that you make section of ISOC, ICANN and the global because I didn't know that those are funders. What we relied on is what was ‑‑ what we relied on was just the department itself as well as organizational structure. But now there is awareness. I think there needs to be greater awareness of where we did get our funding. It wasn't up until communication that I realized that this is where I can get funding for our national initiatives and I think if I didn't know about it, there are a lot more colleagues that also didn't know about it. So they understand up not having IGF meetings because of funding purposes. I think increase awareness of what the channels are that we can get funding and which organizations and what the budget and limitations are for funding. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much, Fantina. Lianna, before I give the floor to you, I am closer her ‑‑ I will give ‑‑ (low voice)
>> Up, good morning, everybody or good afternoon. My name is Namela. I am a member of the parliament of Tanzania. I want to stress upon that I think it's important for whenever a national IGFs are being organized to also remember to extend invitations to members of parliament because at the end of the day, often times we as parliamentarians are not included in discussions and that's where decisions are made and parliamentarians are expected to be part of the process of whatever was agreed upon in our absence should be implemented. I think it's important for national IGFs to make sure parliamentarians are at those events and are involved in capacitated to understand the different dynamics because at the end of the day, in awful the things that have been discussed end up meeting legislators to take some sort of positioning. I wanted to highlight importance of parliamentarians and I am very much grateful for the Tanzania IGF for insuring that I myself am able to be here today because prior that was not there. So I highly recommend our leader here from IGF NAZAR for having that. I wanted to echo my colleague here who mentioned that because of COVID, it's so used of people coming on Zoom, but we tend to forget. Most of us in developing countries do not have budgets for being online. You know? It is almost assumed that ‑‑ so there is no budget for it. But in actual facts, someone to be online, that is expensive in most developing countries. If it is going to be an hour meeting, two hour meeting, there needs to be a way at least to accommodate a certain amount for data because otherwise what happens is people don't turn up. People don't show up. It's almost being translated. It's abusing people because people come online. You get people presenting. They prepare for those meetings and they're not compensated where if they were coming to physical meeting, they would be compensated. If you are presenting online, you have to prepare material. You have to do all that. I think it is very important to insure we recognize time and effort spent and compensated accordingly. Either you won't get the right people to the meetings. So then the discussion does not end up being what it was intended or you end up not having anybody to the meetings and then it becomes further detrimental.
The final thing I wanted to touch on at least with experience of Tanzania, we didn't go through lockdown. But when our schools closed, we got ‑‑ I personally recognize a huge impact of rural connectivity because most of us who are connected to ICT, which meant though we did not have lockdown, when public schools closed, those students in public schools they don't learn. They didn't learn anything. So as we're taking further this discussion of national IGFs, we also need to recognize what interventions can we do in the communities that COVID has shown us? So they could be a collective effort towards promoting and strengthening ICT schools, for example. Those tangible things that really become helpful to commune in the developing sector. Thank you very much for this opportunity.
>> Thank you very much for being here. We hope the NRIs main session will be attended by the parliamentarians that joined from the track in 2021. But so many great points you raised. I would like to comment on them, but I would like to give an opportunity to the colleagues. I would to remind especially on the important point of indeed, engagement of the parliamentarians as decision makers in the NRI processes that I believe the network is to a very good extent aware of that. It is challenging. We're seeing progress in that regard. Beginning of this year, one of the objectives was to produce a mechanism in a collaborative consultative way ‑‑ consultative way how they can be more engaged in the processes. We managed to use a brochure that explains in a simple way how can that be done. It is translated to 10 different languages. Thanks to you and your voluntary commitment in that regard. It is showing results. I don't know if our colleague is here, but he will be the one to speak about results and a number of parliamentarians from the Dominican Republic is here thanks to what Sol told me about that brochure.
With that, I believe I said Lianna and I know there are a couple of colleagues.
>> Thank you, Ania. It's a pleasure being here. I also would like to reflect on the discussions and the points that have been raised by Tanzania colleague on the involvement of parliamentarians and I want to stress that we also invite members in Armenia and I'm very happy that we ‑‑ the member of parliaments have been involved in the discussions and they are present at the national IGFs. Truly their participation and logistical power they have is very important to the issues that have been raised at the IGF. With all the community and all stakeholders being involved in that discussion.
I would like to go back to what Michael said about the timeline of national IGFs and the planning. Of course it is very important to have the timeline. But on the other hand, I want to stress that all national IGFs have been telling this that we are independent. And it's not necessarily ‑‑ of course there is a logic that we need to report and bring the national discussion into regional one and then to the global but nevertheless, all the countries that have their own challenges and they have their own timeline, processes. They have discussions. So you can not ‑‑ it would be very good to tend to that to be before the global IGF, but nevertheless, we are investment and need to respect that for all the countries. Since I have this opportunity, I would also like to thank our international sponsors. Truly they keep supporting the efforts of developing countries and make possible discussions to say it is the Internet Society, that's ICANN and IGF and the local registry operators. So we're in Europe. So thanks to Ripe. Their support means a lot. Their financial support that we receive from them, we also can make the outreach among the local sponsors and bring some interest. We mention sometimes that we have this from the global sponsors. But this is so important we have sustainability from the local space. So these are mainly the points I wanted to raise. Thank you very much.
>> Thank you very much, Lianna.
>> I also put my hand up.
>> Yes, yes, please go ahead.
>> Thank you. So Bram for the record. So I wanted to comment on one example. I feel as a disconnect from the IGF global secretariat and then the regional body as well because if you speak to the AU, are it example, and other IRs in the building, they'll tell you good funding definite example. You find that South Africa is not that way with this kind ever funding within Africa region itself. So I feel like maybe we need to synchronize our information and obviously share in terms of the opportunities that happen within the region, subregion in terms of the funding itself. Now on the issue of the regional IGF, I also feel there's a disconnect. I will give you a perfect example of the IGFs. We have been following up some of us individually to say can we have the study original IGF? Because it is housed within the secretariat, we can only go this far into follow up. Maybe if it were coming from the IGN secretariat to push within those regional offices and follow up and say what's the status for this year's regional IGF. If you go back to the sub‑Africa union, a few colleagues I see are here, um, when they were doing training the trainers, they have outlined clearly. I think Mary is part of the program. To say this is where you hold your regional IGF at the African level. This is the study west Africa and then we have our Africa IGF and then we go to the global. Those are standardized, but I think pushing this information now to the NRIs so they're aware and also the global IGF is aware, so when you say you want to get funding, you say no. It's the level, it's been defined. You have your national IGF on this date and it has surpassed. I think to cope with the criteria being mentioned. I wanted to comment on those. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much, Bram. There are colleagues around you that wanted to speak. And then we can move here and then go check on this side.
>> Mine is just a remark. About funding and the need to spare the news about possibilities of funding. This is a real good point because this is the first time that we have 6 or 7 addition of the IGF. We got specifically for the (?) IGF. We got it from the internet society. It was not that much, but seems the youth NRIs have different dynamic than the other NRIs in the global forum. It was enough because the most important part on that is making those youth (?) being part of this capacity building upwards. We have an open course since last year to get those initial steps inside and having some small teams to compensate them for their efforts is something that is really available so people can stay on this space. On the last open course, we have reflective Ambassadors and many of them became active parts of the governance system. Some of them are here on site and some of them are organizing sessions. Some of them are part of their countries and search institutions or even the governments. And then it is based on this small helpful funding that people can access this youth and our skin access. That I have to know about it. It was the first time that Internet Society gave this funding to youth NRI. At first they didn't know they could provide this, but after it was informed to them and the IGF secretary help us with that a lot. They provided that to us swiftly and it made a whole lot of difference compared to what we had last year. So it's important to take these opportunities reach people by organizing the truth and the eyes around the world in the regional ones.
>> Thank you very much. Let's finish this area and then go to that area.
>> There are still many funding issues. In the Netherlands, we have administrative economic affairs (?) registry making this available. What I personally struggled with is the last two years is the engagement and because we couldn't see each other, events were cancelled. I will do like this for the moment. What we struggled or what I struggled with is the tiredness on sitting on the screen and missing the ability to network. On the one hand, you do have to have knowledge sharing on the session. Part of that and maybe even more important, there's a network off to that on how to proceed after that.
And the second part, yeah. We were ‑‑ or I felt that is the difficult part on engaging new people because the statute is you keep in contact with and you know them. Keeping new people become involved and analyzing in the second year of COVID was really challenging. So we were happy to have face to face events luckily before the Dutch government decided on another lockdown again. But yeah. That made us feel energized again and we're happy to be with some colleagues here in Poland. Unfortunately, 70% dropped out because yeah still the urge or order not to travel. Thank you.
>> Yes. Just pass the microphone. I'm looking at Zoom. I promise our colleagues in Zoom there are quite a large number of coordinators present. We will give the floor to colleagues shortly after we exhaust and acknowledge the hands here in the room. Yes, please. You have the floor.
>> Hi, everyone. I am the focal point of (?) youth. There's an important point concerning youth and (?) especially when it comes to organized and well like meetings. How we can promote youth engagement, youth activities and how can we support youth? We ‑‑ I mean, national IGFs and youths are not connected. So these problem between the two structures. So how can we put the two of them together to work and help youth in terms of capacity building and everything else. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much Osacka. I think it's a good question to raise at 4 o'clock at the youth summit. It's an important question and there will be others to hear. With that, I think Jennifer and we'll come back to Manuel and yes. We will come back here and go to our online participants.
>> Yes. Thank you very much. A lot has been said. I'm not going to repeat that. Yes. So we have the Ghana IGF and then very coordinated. What we realize is that for the past 2 years, we are getting a lot of issues within Ghana or I should say Africa. We realize the youth on (?) has doubled. The youth are getting worried and then one thing that we can think of is what we can use the internet to breach that youth and bringing that we have to think more of technology, think more of internet and how we can tackle some of the issues and of the sectors we can create jobs for this truth. So what we (?) in Ghana, for example, is to look at getting coordinators for all regions of Ghana. Every region will have one coordinator. And this coordinator will invest in that region working with the youth. This Youth IGF is kind of linked to the main Ghana IGF which has almost all the stakeholders including the (?), private organization and all that and then working with the youth to see how we can breach the gap and also to see how we can take some of this information to the grass root and original level to the truth themselves discussing it and trying to identify the issues for us to have them. This is another thing that we can look at to see how we can bridge that gap. So this is what I have for now.
>> Thank you very much. I believe also our ASG will need to leave. We know you have an appointment. Once again, thank you very much.
>> I'll see you around.
>> Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Yes. We have been waiting for a long time.
>> Thank you, Ania. Jennifer Chong. Also I will speak later on with another hat on as IGF, but I do see Markus in our Zoom room and colleagues in the Zoom room. I want to make sure the hybrid format of our meeting is definitely still there.
First with the APR hat on, Asia‑Pacific is a region that is so diverse. It's very difficult already when we ‑‑ before COVID to have ‑‑ to reach out to the underserved community, to reach out to the stakeholders we want to bring in to internet governance discussions than when we went into COVID. Now that was almost 2 years ago. It became very challenging because access is already a very, very, very big problem or topic in our region and I'm sure in other regions too. I think many colleagues have brought up connectivity. Now with Zoom, many I suppose in the more fortunate and resource full countries would assume this is quite easy. You stay at home or you would be in a place you connected. They forget that it's very difficult. Specifically the underserved communities that do not already have connection find it more difficult to be able to engage. That's the first thing. So that's when we're looking at last year APR IGF was fully virtual. The way we spin the money and where we put the money was very interesting. It was quite obvious people had connectivity problems and needed assistance there. And the second thing is a transcription. When you're not in a room with somebody or not seeing their mouths move, it's very difficult also to understand what they're saying. And we tried two different ways. Last year when we were fully virtual, we did use a human transcription service, which was very good because they were quite used to the internet governance terminology and they were okay with that. This year we tried a new experiment and tried to use an AI service transcription and that was very difficult in two ways that we didn't anticipate. First, it was very difficult for them, the AI to understand people speaking English as a second language. If that is not your first language, we're not speaking any kind of standardized accent. And then there's another part where we're trying very much to make sure persons with disabilities are also able to join. So we made it a very big point to also include sign language transcription and I understand that also is extremely ‑‑ it's expenses that we have to put in and think about. And I want to pick up on a point a few colleagues over here especially from the youth initiatives have pointed out. How do we engage new people in a time like this? And we are already quite Zoom fatigued, we are ‑‑ resource is very thin. If we're having the same conversation with the same people in the same room all the time, we will not be able to get the ideas we need. We'll not be able to bring in people we want to bring into the conversation and it's extremely challenging to tell someone. Here is something you should participate and engage in. But this is the only way to do it. It's not ‑‑ it's very difficult to convince especially young people when they already have their classes online competing programs online. Why should we also do this online thing for Internet governance which we're not quite ‑‑ we don't really know what it is. We use the internet, but we don't know what is this policy making and what is the governance part of it. We had to redesign our capacity building. So this year for the fellows, we included a Sty pen for the connectivity. We included a more robust program with the mentors where they had one on one small groups. On chats, it was kind of more a weekly chat they had so they can understand this is what is going to happen. These are the people who are already engaged in this community and would like to guide you through like a mentor to make sure they feel included, to make sure they feel that this is a community I want to stay in, to engage new people and to keep new people is extremely challenging especially when we're in virtual and hybrid meetings. So that is one hat on.
I know a lot of colleagues were asking about funding issue. I will put the other hat on. And I see Marcus is also online as well. So if anything I missed, please do add in the chat or put it in ‑‑ put your hand up. We try very much to work with the NRIs in a developing country or developing world. We know it is very difficult. We know that especially you don't really know if you're going to have the meeting or if you have the meetings and how this funding can be spent. I know the grants we do provide is just a part of what is eventually used in the meetings. There is like consideration about transcription. There is consideration about equipment costs and especially if you are an NRI that is just starting up, I think the (?) was working quite closely with Ania. But they were asking us what about the criteria eligibility? Do we meet the requirements? We try hard to do that and they're trying to set up their first meeting and they were wondering do we qualify for this criteria of fund something and then lastly, I know a few colleagues have mentioned. There are different sources of funding that come in everywhere and I think it's very important to make this known to the NRI network. I can only speak on behalf ‑‑ I can only speak there the Asia‑Pacific standpoint. I can definitely does do a lot of work in our region. ISOC does a lot of work in our region, but the IAR does do a lot of work for Asia Pacific it would be APNIC. They have funding they would look into. I don't know specifics, but it is worth looking into it.
And lastly because I have one last hat for DotAsia. We are a regional generic domain. We also provide funding for the ccTLDs in our region. So in the Asia‑Pacific region. The one thing we did this year was help the Korean IGF and we provided support there both in terms of funding and in kind support. I really encourage colleagues, you know, NRI colleagues to share this information with Ania so we can all benefit from knowing where to get funding. Thanks.
>> Thank you very much, Jennifer. I promised before. While Emmanuel is getting ready, please allow me to give the floor to Nigel who is with us from the Caribbean region online. Nigel was supposed to be here in person, but had to cancel his trip. Nigel, you have the floor and after that, we will hear from Julian. And then we're going to come back to manual and then we coming to this side. Nigel, please.
>> NIGEL: Thank you very much, Ania. I hope you can hear me.
>> We can hear you well.
>> NIGEL: I am Nigel from the Caribbean IGF. This would be a regional IGF. I am sorted with the Caribbean telecommunications union. It is a governmental organization with 20 member countries in the Caribbean. And we serve as coordinator and kind of corporate for the Caribbean. We have done so since 2005. Now we have our meeting in August and in terms of funding and sponsorship and sustainability and so on, over the years, we have had sponsorship from the Internet organizations like ICANN, the regional registry, the internet society and so on. Also some of the larger internet like Google and Facebook. We have like everyone else physical meetings annually since before COVID, but since 2020, the last two years, we've been online only. One of the things we did before COVID because we're dealing with islands and not everyone might be able to take the travel to a physical meeting. We had on site participation from before COVID. So going fully remote wasn't too much of a shock for us. I think in terms of sustainability is useful to have a corporate or more secretariat for the IGF. In our case in the Caribbean, this CTU of the organization has taken lateral and one thing we noticed though is that there are different challenges or funding ask sustainability for the region efforts and the national efforts. At the national levels, you might find that the regional organizations might not have as much funding available for each and every one of the islands it wants to have a national IGF. They have to depend more on the stakeholders like your telecommunications, service providers or the governments or the local ccTLD. Someone discussed timing and so on between the NRIs and the global IGF, which I agree with. We have information data, linkages coming up from the national level and up the global level and thereafter. More importantly sustainability is we need support resources for record keeping in addition to having a corporate form. It helps to you accept and seek sponsorships and so on. We know capacity building sessions and you go to a particular country and hosting the meeting there. You have posted link sessions and you enhance the capability of the locals in that particular placing.
I think, Ania in terms of all the things and funding and sustainability, those are the points I would make noting especially that the (?) are different when you look at regional and the national. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much, Nigel. Those were excellent points and very useful advice as you share.
I would like to give the floor now to Julian. Maybe to Zeina to conclude with the Zoom interventions and then we will come back to the room. Yes, Julian, please. You have the floor.
>> JULIAN: Thank you for this opportunity to share with you our thoughts and technology ant ‑‑ and sustainability. We have been taking our IGF, local IGF. This year we had 8 addition. We have been getting support from the IGF support association also from the Colombian ccTLD (?) administrator. And financial support also from Google Colombia. A lot of in kind support from many members of the IGF universities, Private Sector organizations, government, main observatory or Civil Society organizations. We have received also as Jennifer mentioned the opportunity to get resources from the internet address for Latin America and Latin. They have been promoting areas around inter‑governance in the region and also opened these opportunities for international initiatives. In our ‑‑ that is related also to sustainability and I want to mention that our last form this year even if we have a very nice attendance for more than about 32 speakers, we have less participation than previous year even if we make a great effort to bring people from the regions not only from the major cities in Colombia and all we include language transcription in our meetings to increase the audience. It has been a challenge to bring the meeting to more people and catch the audience. We have to be with the new initiatives. I am listening carefully from new colleagues about what we can to do increase the attention of other stakeholders, participate more actively in the discussions and hopefully that we need to find more strategies as we do with the work of secretariat in the global IBM to bring more tangible outputs from our discussions. So try that way to bring back more attention in the discussions and have more tangible outputs from them. That will be our contribution. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much, Julian. Given the time, I think we're going to mainly focus on the first agenda item. With your permission and agreement, I think that is fine buzz we can always continue online discussing the second point, which is about the policy impactful. I do think you're including those aspects in your remarks and I welcome those. Primarily then folks sustain act of the NRIs released the financial sustain act, but also other areas which is past development such as stakeholder engagement and similar concepts.
With that, Manuel, I will briefly go to my right side and then come back to Zoom.
>> Thank you very much, Anian. I will take 1 minute to remember our champion McCain because I think it's one of the people that we'll really miss in this meeting. I'll pray with you, if you accept. We take 1 minute just to remember the person he was for us.
>>
>> Yes, of course. Thank you, Manuel. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I'm going to talk about independence or the sustainability of the national IGFs and I'll take our case in TOGO. So let me say. A lot of people have already mentioned independence of the IGF. There won't be independent if we don't have the financial sustainability. In some countries some stakeholders have taken and have high‑jacked IGF because they have the money. We should really start thinking of and from our country, for example, we don't organize the IGF if we don't have minimum guarantee of funding. When we talk about agenda, let's talk about organizing IGF in January or June, that's not until at least one policy says okay. This year we're going to support you. This year we have to wait for the underserved to send an e‑mail and say gentleman, we will have ‑‑ you have our support. Before we choose a bit. Those are some of the things that at least at the beginning of the year, we should have assurance especially from the traditional (?). IBM says the other groups usually support our initiatives. So it helps us while giving us that guarantee that yes. This year will hold our IGF. And the second point is also what happened to the scores? Looking at the regional level and national level, the schools are the most expensive. It's way people have to fly from one country to another, stay in a Holt and they're the most expensive. I have noticed in the process of the secretariat, we don't have anywhere where we place the school financially. It is something we look at. Even tradition and the ISOC foundation for example, they only support regional schools. So any country from national schools they don't. ICANN the same thing. It will give you technical support as the colleagues, which is humans. There is something where we do need money and it's the only place to build a capacity of the people. We just observed one minute to be honest when McCain passed, it was a challenge because we've thinking about what would upon future of our initiative. It was a part and we all rely on him, but at the same time, we don't have the resources to train other people to actually fit the shoe. So it's very important those schools we are able to give a certain amount of money or certain sustain act and independence for those schools. Because today in A46 Awe talk about a youth. It's difficult to mention the age because at the same time, the youth are the people sometimes working on the national IGF as well. So where does it defeat in the IGF process. It's for the HYOIs, but ‑‑ we absorb their budgets of the schools. And we absorbed the national IGF and it's sometimes very difficult. Very difficult even for getting volunteers because nobody will be a volunteer in a processed where there's no money. You can't do anything. Even if you have that ‑‑ how do you call it? You have that passion for it. Thank you. You have that passion for it. It's difficult to do it without a familiar ‑‑ I agree with the secretariat to look at where we place those initiatives especially the youth at the national level and the schools. So if we are playing for funding, the same period we should know that those event required by it so that the support is done as well. Some countries they look at stakeholders and don't have the (?). They're not fully involved. We rely only a small budget that come from traditional funding. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much, Emanuel. If you're going to be brief, if not, I did promise this is the cue. But be very brief, yes.
>> The thing that's important in the process is usual and national IGF cannot be in composition. Make (?) capacity building process. Make another new people for our national IGF original IGM. And national would be couldn't traiting and challenge of national level of original level. That is my proposal.
>> Thank you. Let's go like this toward this way and then we'll go to Zoom pain ants.
>> All right. I will try to keep it brief. Can I just ‑‑ okay. And I'm the chair person of the south African governance forum, but like many others, I wear many hats. I work as an advisor to communications authority of South Africa where we look at consumer issues and telecommunications of broadcasting and I run a company that runs additional governments. I think just to be solution oriented, first thing I believe we need to do is create minimum standards of compliance. When it comes to how we disseminate information. So number 1, insuring that websites are present and we take this for granted, but we have, in r Is and national IGFs that don't have websites. We have an issue of dissemination information, but outside of, that what do we stand for? Who are we? We should be using the same platforms to spread the knowledge. So that's the first one. The second one is creating a compliance pack. So what does that look like? When it comes to funders, some IGF or some forums don't have let's say heads or just a standard communication that led us to the funders we say we don't have. It becomes you will not have a phone call and ask them to give you something. There's a certain level of communication that should be ‑‑ things should be communicated in a particular manner.
And another one I've been hearing issues around we want facing to face. In Africa, even just going online is a privilege. We are you facing issues of electricity, shortages and I will use that word quite intensely. That is everywhere and the commentary country. Very few people have generators and converters. So we do a lot of work in rural communities. They get us and people are online or on Facebook. They have specific funds just for a social media. So you won't be able to connect to Zoom. There's no money for that. So for me, it's really saying can we have minimum standards. I don't speak for everybody. But this is something we need to look at and the last one I think the lady from south Pacific Asia, you mentioned something around accessibility and insuring that when we do have these meetings, we are looking at the disabled community. I think that's excellent. Can you go on to website 1? We will be insuring that people who are deaf and hind can use it and navigation wise? So that's the first one. Language is a massive barrier. And Zambia, how many languages are in Zambia? 72. 72 languages. These things are there. We make sure that those are the minimum standards that we have. I'll keep it brief. I can go for days, but thank you very much for the opportunity.
>> Thank you very much. That was very quick.
>> She's our chair person. Thank you for that. I also want to speak to my colleague from MALAWI. I'm so glad you mention the issue but we should take up the opportunity just to speak because we can't have a regional initiative. But also to speak to the independent and pulling in what Michael spoke about the timelines that we need to have our IGFs. In order to respect the independent of the national initiatives, is it then possible for us to have a reporting mechanism also joining from new advocacy and what is the bear minimum compliance standard? There are challenges we're still grappling with, but make sure we comply with the global standard. What reporting mechanism and maybe this is just a question I am throwing out to you. What reporting mechanisms can we have in place to insure we still qualify for IGF even though we have it after the actual deadline and we can still comply with the reporting as structures that are in place. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. I take note of the question and we can address it later.
>> Thanks. I have to highlight two points. From our point of view, I think we are (?) some kind of service. You are inviting a new generation and people on the Internet. We have special requirements. About parliament and policy makers involvement, we can share our love of two years and finally policy making and the central economies. And this gave us a different level of relations with policymakers. Every legislation and draft is here to be discussed. Right now we have partners in our business stakeholder holder. They have to discuss and give you the flow and use IGF. Finally about the funding. About the funding, yes. IGF has problems and issues and challenges with the funding. We would like to invite them to the Private Sector and give opportunities. Auto also up toes. We tried to find people who have the understanding the other governance and social use funding forel in working and we are using translation or any networking is an important part of the IGF meetings we're using private sector funding. Thanks. We'll finish with this line, but I would like to go back to Zoom after we finish this round.
>> Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Naza from Tanzania IGF. I'm glad to be here with all of you. I would like to make my contribution in terms of what we have been doing in Tanzania. Number 1, point number 1 is on the sustainable of the NRIs. I would like to look at this from two or three perspectives. One is we'll really have to be looking at it from strategic and creative way of doing this stuff. I'm saying this because there is one guy who has been saying you're asking for funding, but I think you are (?) in society. What are you doing? And I say we are doing things. We have to apply strategic and creative thinking when we're doing our activities. For example, in Tanzania, what we have done so that we can bring things on the table, we have started something called women and youth innovation. And basically what these hubs are going to do and they are doing, they're addressing the issue of connectivity number 1. Number 2, they are addressing the issue of innovation space, especially for young people. And number 3, we're also addressing the issues of using Indigenous knowledge is to solve our own problems. For example, in the issue of climate change we're using the local knowledge to be able to take of climate actions on those areas. So you can see I am ‑‑ secondly on the issue of capacity development, I think I am with looking at it from two levels. Number 1, it is at the national level. Number 2, it is at the global level. In terms of resources and human resources. From national perspective, what we are thinking is to brand our national IGF in terms of what is it that we are doing. We're doing that process through engagement. You can see one of members of parliament because we believe if we engage and we brand otherwise in terms of what we're doing, I think we'll have a lot of traction and people will, you know, to bring funds for the schools and for IGF and for Youth IGF. We started the Youth IGF this year.
On the monetary side of resources, think the monetary resources is very important. And I think on the IGF portal, there needs to be a number of probably links, whatever funders that are interested to fund the NRIs initiatives to be accessible. Some you may find maybe some funders are inclusive to fund the NRIs, but they're not aware of that. For example, I didn't know if (?) does provide funding for the IGF. Ironically, I was (?) afraid of the trainer. I don't know if it is my own ignorance? Maybe I would have to find out. That is very important. Branding of our initiatives is very important. That guy was joking about school debating society. We talk about policy and all that issue. Third point is on the issue of policy on the agenda of policy, I think. You were talking about policy. In Tanzania, we're going to create the parliamentary focus. That will engage not only the members of parliament, but August will techno crates from the government. Work together with the members of parliament in the process of creating any policy. So I think parliamentary focus on internet governance, we will have solved a lot of challenges on the policy debate and policy processes. I think are now, let me end there because of time. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much for raising these important points. Roberto wanted to speak. After Roberto or ‑‑ yes. And then after Roberto, colleagues are warning me we have five minutes. But I want to hear briefly from our online colleagues. So let's start with Roberto and going to Zoom. We'll see if we have enough time to hear other comments.
>> Good morning. I would like to comment about the second point about how to make work policy impactful, which is very important. I think in Bolivia and other countries, we were listening over the last three events that we have, different perspectives and solutions and ideas coming from the panelists and also coming from the participants in order to overcome just in example one. How to achieve the access and connectivity. Sometime before, we tried to come up with a different format. We came up with inverted panel last year. It was really good. We had more engaging session. Again, listening to a lot of suggestions very good ideas. For this time in our last IGF in November, we wanted to do something different. We wanted to provide some particular outcome. That's what we did in this. We started a different format now. We called policy radio pizza workshop. This time, we prepared for a couple of weeks prior to our IGF with prepared draft document. I'm talking about one session. We did it in three and eight sessions that we organized. In this one, the one they was moderating, we prepared a document, a draft document with different ideas and also with the conclusions that we have from previous IGFs the last three years. With that document, we started by presenting a summary of all the discussions we have before and presented the draft document to all participants. And during an hour, we listened to different suggestions for adjustment and additions to the document.
And finally, we finished with ‑‑ we're about to finish because we have published on the website and it's going to be published for some days more. We will send officially to different stakeholders particularly to the offices and agencies of Bolivian government. I think that's a very good way to come up with some policy impactful. That's what I wanted to share.
>> That's very valuable. On this particular point of the NRI policy being impactful, we will continue discussing this on an online environment. There is a lot of material to be shared. I know our time is up. So I will try to be brief. I think we really have to hear from our colleagues in Zoom. I would like to give the floor to Tjani.
>> I am from the north African IGF. So I'd like to note that for sustainability, the secretary is one of the elements of stack of the incentives and we're lucky to have the (?) to secure this function literally. They are doing all the secretary function. As for the funding, I have to note the IGF support and the ISOC foundation support for this year, we had other support before, you but this year, only these two helped us. We just concluded much ‑‑ it was in RBI rid mode. Can I tell you it is a little bit complicated, but we managed to did it thanks to this report of the organizations and of the host country. An important thing nobody spoke about which is the Harmonization of the calendar for the rise. I think that IGF secretariat should create a dashboard on which it puts all the events related to Internet governance of the year and update it continuously. On this dashboard, they put their dates that they want to help to hold their meetings. So I think it is an important thing because we don't have to have conflict. And proof of communication, yes, of course. We have to improve communication. There is a big problem of communication between us and also between us and the global IGF. What else? Okay. I will stop here. I know we are short of time. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very being very patient. Colleagues told me there is a really red alarm that in 3 minutes we have to conclude. So if you agree because our colleague Andrea has been waiting in Zoom for some time and I know a number of colleagues in this room are waiting. At lost let's conclude with Zoom to give the final words to Andrea. Jenna posted very valuable comments in the chat and I encourage everyone to connect to Zoom and see the comments and I will certainly communicate that to the mailing list. Andrea, if you can be brief to address us all.
>> Andrea: Hello, everyone. It is great to see you on video. But I commend all those of you that made the effort to travel to face all the burdens and I heard also the very harsh weather to be there in person. I think it's very important message that you send with your presence to the IGF community.
I wanted to share a few remarks which I think could be helpful for the community. I don't have time to go into details. So I only answer the first of the two questions. I hope there will be chances to share more about the other points. I think there could be useful learning for the rest of the community. I think they found a very successful model for the second year in a row. A model that surprised many of us searches for the first time the (?) IGF and no issues on resources and funding. This is not usually ‑‑ this is ‑‑ I personally work for ICANN and we have been supporting a lot of national IGFs. We know on many initiatives, we heard even discussions. And I think the good ‑‑ the good lesson to learn is that it's been able to partner with local stakeholder community. In this case, the network of the chamber of commerce and basically the chamber of commerce the powerful idea behind a national IGF. And they joined up bringing their own network and resources and, um, and for the second year in a row, they recognized ‑‑ we organized the most successful IGF ever with numbers in not going larger than the global IGF. And, of course, the chamber of commerce, they have their own views and agenda about the digital economy and it's not always the governance model and ideas and principles and their plans. It's been a good dialogue with them. One thing that I really encourage and happy to share more to go venture and engage. We have other actors that are part of the digital economy or the digital policy making and, of course in the Private Sector, we just saw this is how much the digital, boomed in a moment where all the rest of the industry were down. So the interest on the governance topic also on that party is as high as ever. So there are even more elements for them to get interested. And at first the principles of bottom‑up inclusivity equal footing are hard to kind of, you know, is not the easiest. They introduce yourself, but once you can show the powerful of getting on the same platform the ministers, policymakers and MEPs. It would interest the Private Sector. We found it very powerful alliance with the chamber of commerce. We continue to do that. But we sell the model to the chamber of commerce. Chamber of commerce saw the value to support it. They did share more of those. The time is very short and I thank you very giving me the floor and hope you will make this global IGF very successful. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much, Andrea. Just by seeing this full room and colleagues after two years, I think I'm confident in saying it is already successful. Thank you so much for being concise. There are so many hands in this room and in Zoom and we don't have enough time. I think people behind us want to have lunch. The host provided for free. I will let you G. first I would like to thank everyone. It's been a wonderful session full of inspiring ideas. I took quite a lot of notes. 25 individual NRIs spoke at this session. Obviously a lot of ideas are subject for further discussion. I think one of the requests obviously from your side was to make more visible funding opportunities in the international ecosystem. I will bring this to the attention of my colleagues and secretariat. We can do this and understand where the resources are and make them visible. Yes, please.
>> You can correct your sustainable funding opportunities?
>> Thank you very much. The reason why we move this to the day 0 and not to the last day is to really get to know each other better and then hopefully have some spin off bilateral meetings off of this session. I do encourage you to meet bilaterally. I hope I can meet with some of you to discuss a little bit more of what's happening from the side of this secretariat and couple of resources that are emerging. So we'll continue online our discussion and bon appetite. Have a good lunch.