The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. 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 to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> PAULA CÔRTE‑REAL: Hello, everyone. Can you hear? We are about to start. Good morning. I will like to welcome you to our workshop: Youth Engagement in Internet Governance Ecosystem: Current Scenarios, Controversies and Future Actions. I am Paula Côrta‑Real, ISOC Fellow for Youth and from The Internet Society (?). This session will be an open dialogue, informal discussion about the barriers and problems encountered by youth within the IGF community. We have four speakers, Bruna, from the Youth Observatory, David Mora from Schar School of Policy and Government and Elisabeth Schauermann ,IGF Ambassador and Jianne Soriano, a Netmission Ambassador.
Just a way to facilitate the dynamics I will provide each speaker a question. Then everyone can join a group of discussion of each question. There are going to be four groups, one for each speaker. Everyone can talk. It is going to be like an open dialogue.
To start with, Elisabeth: What are the barriers encountered by youngsters when entering the Internet governance ecosystem? How can we prospect the youth to engage with Internet governance?
>> ELISABETH SCHAUERMANN: Thank you, Paula. Is this on? Yes. So, this came up . . . when I was thinking about the struggles, I was thinking about my own struggle. This is a very limited perspective. So, I am really looking forward to talking to you and figuring out how our different experiences translate to maybe a joint point of view of the struggles that we face. But I group my thoughts into some clusters that we can explore if you want.
My first point would be lack of education and information. I don't know about you, but I stumbled into (?) by accident more or less. It was never addressed in my formal education. I never heard about it, was not part of my worldview before I started my master's thesis.
In areas where IG is not part of an educational policy, it is hard to get into it. If you want to get into it on an international level, you have to have English, which is a privilege not all have in their education. Also there are forms that have to be filled out for funding.
With that comes my next point: A very distinct skill of skills is needed ti fill out forms in order to get funding. Which gets to my next point: There is a funding, most fellowships are pretty competitive. There will be much demand for youth engagement. But, as hardly anyone in this group of people can self‑funded or be funded by employers, we heavily rely on public funding or funding by organisations or NGOs. It is not always easy to get. And my last point for now would be a lack of time. Not every education program allows you to travel that much or attend conferences all the time.
Those already working, not every job is in that feature you cannot take time off probably or taking on extra responsibilities might be a real issue. I am happy if people will join me in the discussion later. Thank you.
>> PAULA CÔRTE‑REAL: Thank you, Elisabeth, good points I saw myself in a lot of them. Moving forward to Bruna: Is there any ideal model of youth engagement program? What do you think are the key elements to any of them?
>> BRUNA SANTOS: Hi, everyone, good morning. If we start thinking about an ideal youth engagement program. I guess my answer would be: Not so far. I mean, not until today. We have really good programs with a lot of high points each. You have ones with a good amount of capacity building. You have others in which they pretty much take you by the hand and walk you through these processes
If it has one good thing, it lacks another. Somebody takes you by the hand, explains the subjects, but you don't have the funding. So jumping straight away to the part of what would be ideal for the programs to have. The points that I would like to highlight, it would be a proper level of mentoring in order to keep people on the community. So, not only bringing people in but manaing people to join the discussions other than the engagement ones.
A good other characteristic that I would like to highlight would be funding. I would say that 70% of this room relies on funding. Does anybody here not rely on funding? Please raise your hand if you don't rely on funding to be on IGF.
>> VOICE: Exactly.
(Chuckles)
>> BRUNA SANTOS: Then, yes, I guess funding, mentoring, capacity‑building, a good level of networking also. I would like to be better in properly being introduced to other people ‑‑ besides, this is a fellow or this is a young person. Someone who teaches how to network, you how to introduce yourselves and engage with the communnity would be good points for discussion.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Thank you, Bruna. Moving forward to David: Talking about the need for a forum or action, the newly or a line of action that would conjoin the ideas and practices of these newly engaged individuals, do you think that there should be a youth agenda for Internet governance or a Best Practice Youth Forum within the IGF?
>> DAVID MORAR: You know it is a youth panel when at least two members take a photo of the crowd to send it out later. Yes, I think there needs to be a unified voice for youth. At the same time, I think it needs to address the diversity of views within the community and promote the general issues that youth see as important; which think are somewhat different from what the overall IG community thinks are important.
I think that there should be a legitimate IG institution that represents both the diversity and the specific issues. However, at the same time I believe there should be less of a silo type situation where we all gather in a panel at 10:00 at IGF and talk amongst ourselves about how youth should be represented. I think we should make a strong case that youth or age diversity is considered as a legitimate type of diversity when looking at panels for IGF and other places. And I think that if we are going to be successful members of the IGF community, we first have to have ‑‑ first have to feel like we belong; and we first have to feel that our voices and our opinions matter. And the first way to do that is to have a venue where you feel like you are with your peers, and from there, go out and feel like you are with your peers with the rest of the IGF community. I will like forward to talking with you more in this small group. Thank you.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Thank you. That moves us to the next question. You said about unifying our voices and also the diversity of views. Moving to Jianne: Considering the amount of youth movements around the globe, how can we represent the diversity of realities and youths in order to legitimate represent their claims? How do you think those initiatives the could work together in order to exchange experiences, Best Practices and regional backgrounds?
>> JIANNE SORIANO: Thank you for the question. Welcome, everyone. So, that's actually two questions but I will just answer them both together. I have three points. The first is localization, because I think that even though young people come here, it's also important this we bring back what we learned here to our communities, localities or regions.
Like, for example, in Hong Kong, there is the Hong Kong Youth IGF that we organize and we also have the Asia‑Pacific Youth Governance Forum. So, we bring back youth from different regions and help them organize their own forums and their own countries.
Second was echoing what the other speaker said about capacity and support. I think outreach programs are important because not a lot of young people are interested in Internet governance if they don't know what Internet governance is. So we have to address how to motivate them and also mobilize them. And not just for one‑time participation. Finally is the focus on end users because people that don't have access to the Internet don't really reach these conferences or don't have a lot of representatives come here. So, I would say that there should be more collaboration with stakeholders to support these young people to go to these conferences.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Thank you, Jianne. So, now we can split into four groups, which each one with a team, each with a question. The first with Elisabeth to talk about the barriers and counterbarriers; with Bruna to talk about youth engagement programs and their models; with David about youth agenda and BPF, Best Practices in general; and Jianne, with the two questions, considering the diversity and the local initiatives. So, anyone can join the groups.
We can go to the corners of the rooms. Not a good room to do that kind of discussion. But anyway we can just ‑‑
>> DAVID MORAR: I'll be over there.
>> PAULA CÔRTE‑REAL: And Jianne will be there. You have about 20, 30 minutes to discuss; then one of the speakers or anyone you choose will be the Rapporteur to talk about what you discussed. So, let's go.
>> DAVID MORAR: We know it's morning, but: Let's be active. Let's show the old what the youth can do.
(Chuckles)
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: I have been be asked to say the questions again, so I will repeat them. Elisabeth, which is over there, is going to talk about what are the barriers encountered by youngsters when entering the Internet governance ecosystem and how can we prospect with the youth to engage with the IG, Internet governance. Bruna, who is over there, is going to talk about if there is any ideal model of youth engagement program and what do you guys think are the key elements of any of them. David, which is there, is going to talk about the need of a forum or a line of action that would conjoin the ideas and practices of these newly engaged individuals and what you think, that there should be a youth agenda for Internet governance or a Best Practices Youth Forum within IGF. And the last, Jianne, who is there, she is going to talk a little about, considering the amount of youth movements around the globe; how can we as young people represent the diversity of realities and youth in order to legitimately represent their claims. And the other question: How do you think those initiatives could work together in order to exchange experience Best Practices and regional backgrounds?
(Breakout sessions taking place off microphone)
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Elisabeth, which is over there, is going to talk about what are the barriers encountered by youngsters. Here, it's Bruna. The diversity with Jianne; and with David, the youth agenda and BPFs.
>> PAULA CÔRTE‑REAL: Hi, everyone. We are coming to the end. So, please if you can go back to your seats so we can continue.
(Pause)
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL CÔRTE-REAL: Hi, everyone. Thank you. You had great discussions over there. So, we are going to start with ‑‑ okay. Everyone got to their places already. We are going to start with Elisabeth to talk about what she discussed with her group.
>> ELISABETH SCHAUERMANN: Thank you, Paula. It was a great group discussion. Thank you, everyone, who joined. Because we got a lot of different insights from different geographical backgrounds. So one thing I totally forgot in my list which is so important is that many areas of the world or many communities still are not connected enough to the Internet.
Before young people can obviously get into IG, they have to have access to the Internet, which is still an issue in many places so we cannot expect young people to engage without access. And also without the digital competencies that have been to be put forward in education. Which leads me to my next point.
One point raised by all of us is we have to focus more on awareness raising to get Internet governance curricula into more programs and into more regions and countries because that lacks in many. So we can actually build capacities, multiply on our knowledge and expertise that we gather and not just by extent, stumble forward, maybe fall down at some point.
A way to promote ‑‑ I mean it was raised that social media is very close to young people; so that is a way to get them engaged and to get them to access resources. But even social media without a budget is hard to get by or is hard to properly use in a way that it reaches a lot of people. So, money will always be an issue, right, for young people? But that is something that has to be resolved in smaller spaces and can be really a global thing, although it would be desirable to do so.
Then we talked about resources. Alejandro from ISOC invited us to use more resources, which is great. They have it in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese now so that reaches a lot of people in the world. But surely we have to work on that to make it even more accessible. Thank you.
>> PAULA CÔRTE‑REAL: Thank you so much, Elisabeth. Moving forward to Bruna.
>> BRUNA SANTOS: So trying to resume the discussion on some points, the first one that came out of our group discussion was the need for enabling ‑‑ empowering more leaders from local and small communities other than the ones who are already engaged. The second point would be that countries slash companies or the ones in charge of youth engagement programs should be exchanging experiences on some thoughts of a Best Practices Forum, what works, what doesn't. How you did you manage to make something work? And another thing that was needed for us was to better advertise the programs. At first from the person who is organizing it and second, the Fellows, the awardees. We need to go back to our groups, friends, tell them about it. You don't need to get to know our fellowship program as a unique opportunity that you get once in a lifetime. Like, this happens. You can be here. We also thought we wouldn't be able to be here. And there you have it: A lot of people in this room are Fellows, an awardee of something.
Last but not least ‑‑ no, there are two last points: We need to stay in touch with our local ISOC chapter, multistakeholder committee or ICT in the region in order to keep the knowledge going and spreading the word.
Last but not least, these programs should have mentorship opportunities established as a thing other than fellows trying to make their ways back not program. So, we should have ways of attending. If you attend once as a newcomer, the second time you should be able to attend as a mentor for the later group or a fellow newcomer. So, this will be a new model and this was our discussion.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Thank you. This was really a good sampling. I am going to make a brief comment at some points. Knowledge is nothing if you don't pay it forward. So we as young people should share with our peers everything we have been able to learn. We are here. We are at the IGF; so we have to pay our knowledge forward. Moving forward to David, what did you guys discuss?
>> DAVID MORAR: Yes. Thank you very much. Also, thank you very much to the people in my group that had amazing ideas and we had a great conversation, very productive. We talked about a lot of things. And I think, to sum up quickly without doing a disservice to what we talked about: We looked at it from different perspectives. You know, somebody in our group mentioned that there are more and more national Youth IGF's popping up. And that would be an amazing opportunity to be able to have the diverse voices of youth from one area that come together on an international level to bring together all of the outcome documents from each of these national youth IGF's. And then somebody brought the fact that in some countries, they are rather large and not everybody can afford to go to the capital for a national Youth IGF; which then brought us to thinking, well, maybe, we should look into and propose this idea of, you know, regional incentive the, regional ‑‑ regions of countries are ‑‑ not multiple countries but regional Youth IGF's that can happen online if there is no way for people to meet if they are in an area that is geographically difficult to come together.
Also somebody else brought up, well, you know, just because we have our own national Youth IGF doesn't mean we understand the issues of the world or the perspectives from the youth from the rest of the world. The response was: Well, then, maybe the people who go to the national IGF, come back to their ‑‑ that go to the international IGF, come back to their national Youth IGF and say these are the issues that the young people from around the world were talking about. This is what they are frustrated about, what they are interested in. Are these issues that should matter to us as well?
So, there should be a feedback loop and not just sending information, sending ideas from groups like international Youth IGF but bringing back those ideas from the rest of the world. Also we touched briefly on the notion that yes, there should be sort of a youth part of panels around the IGF but also simply the fact that you are young doesn't necessarily mean that you are or ‑‑ are qualified or should be seen as qualified. You have you to be qualified, you have to know what you are talking about. However, if you are at IGF, that means, as Bruna said, you probably went through a funding process where you had to prove your worth; and it is difficult and if you are here, you know what you are talking about. Also we talked about how institutionally youth aren't seen as part of the conversation. When people try to ask questions at panels; it's the panelists or if the moderator does not know who you are because you are young, new or not from their region, they are not necessarily going to call on you at the beginning but will wait until the end and speed you up.
Also as a more lighthearted thing, it is very interesting that the Youth panel at 10:00 a.m., this one is in a room that is kind of far away from everything else, like the red‑headed stepchild of the IGF. It's like well if you want to talk about youth, well, you have to find it first.
(Chuckles)
>> DAVID MORAR: Because it is just not a national or international organization that is well‑known that is doing this panel. Again, thank you very much to everybody in my group. We had an amazing discussion. I think that these ideas can move forward and actually make a difference for knows of us here and those of us that are going to be youth in ten, fifteen years. News flash: In ten, fifteen, most of us are not going to be considered youth. Heck, I am not a youth legally by the IGF definition.
(Chuckles)
>> DAVID MORAR: Thank you very much. That's it. I am done.
(Applause)
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Thank you, David. Good remarks. Moving forward to Jianne.
>> JIANNE SORIANO: So, our group talked about diversity and of course it was a very diverse group. People from Latin America, Asia and Africa. Firstly, I asked them about the situation of youth programs in their own regions. We pinpointed some that work, some that don't work. The challenges that we find is there is a language problem. If you are conducting something in your own region, it has to be in the local language. Then you have to bring that to a global audience. Then you have to, you know, conduct it in English. And also the common problem we have is youth not having enough interest in governance. Or even if they have interest, they don't know how to be part of it.
One of the participants from Africa mentioned that, in his region, the Internet actually just started. So they don't know how to talk about something that just started.
So, how do you do that? And they also mentioned the digital divide between the older generation and the younger generation; how the older generation ‑‑ because they live . . . have different uses of the Internet. They want to do it their way. They also mentioned about the lack of Internet governance awareness in education. Because there is no introduction about it in the curriculum.
In terms of diversity we also pinpoint common areas like age, economic background, financial background and gender. Like what Bruna said, we come here, dependent on funding. So, people who are not financially well‑off, do they have the voice to come there or the capacity to come here? And some solutions that they proposed is about localizing the Youth Internet governance discussions and also having some preparations before coming here. Someone mentioned about having individual projects to reach rural areas or areas not so connected. So, when you start small and you get bigger later on. Someone mentioned having a role model or references. In order to start something you also need to have help or have a reference on what can work and what cannot work. We mentioned about the importance of having like youth for youth initiatives.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: That is really good, thank you. We have some online participation.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. To question three, I think the responsibility of IGF system makes things difficult for you to participate. I don't think the IGF environment should be a perfect environment for youth learning Best Practices and skills to be relevant in their regions. And in agreement to the question there should be an agenda for youth on Internet governance and another for (?) for question three: Youth have been taken away ‑‑ taken away from the space so long,ing especially when coming to the Internet space that is the first barrier to the IGF. They have to know, first, what is the IGF. How can they be involved? And so on. Also, the need of funds to go to the IG meetings. Many of them are at school, at work or don't have time to travel et cetera.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: I am not sure if ‑‑ some of the answer, I think that was already answered, some of the questions were already answered by the speeches of the speakers. But anyone have any comments about that?
(Pause)
>> PANELIST: Especially getting people to places to talk to each other is always ‑‑ there is always a lot of money involved that isn't necessarily spent in that way. So, you youth as I guess a civil society group, we have to speak up for ourselves and demand the money that is there. The Internet is such ‑‑ income can be spent on use. To make that a policy goal, there has to be more inclusion and more speaking up and more lobbying but in the best sense of the word.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: I agree with you. I agree when we talk about funding, for example, and the thing that came into my mind when I talked to Bruna as well, sometimes we have funding by some companies and young people are more likely to speak out their thoughts. This is also something that we can you talk about on trying to raise funding and to be free to speak out wherever you want is another point that I wanted to mention. We can open up for anyone who wants to talk in the microphone.
Because I know it's good when I have this conversation with your peers but it is also good when you have the chance to talk freely. So, anyone who wants to talk, just raise your hand.
>> PARTICIPANT: We have a question from Charlie from Peru: What do you think about the online participation ‑‑ sometimes we forgot that we have Internet and we don't need to be physically in Geneva burning hundreds of dollars to participate. I mean, he is there, like 5:00 a.m. And he is thinking his participation matters. So we need to promote the idea of online attendance and onsite attendance are the same. What do the panelists think about online participation?
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Okay. Who wants to answer this?
>> PANELIST: I think that's crucial. The issue with online participation is that it you's huge and it's very useful. And if you are able to wake up at 5:00 a.m. and listen to a bunch of people blab on about something that you care about, then that is amazing of that is fantastic and you should continue do it. The issue is that besides the panels, what a thing like IGF or ICANN or ITF or any other multistakeholder Internet governance institution is that you get not just the panels, you get conversations with people, to meet new people, to share ideas and you get to understand what is happening in the world from outside of the panels. The panels ‑‑ there is only a set number of panels you can go to a day unless you are, you know, a superhero. You can only go to one panel at a time and there is only so much time in the day. But once you are here you meet new people. You interact with them. You understand things you otherwise wouldn't. Online participation is crucial and I think we should push for people to be able to participate even without being ‑‑ even without you spending a bunch of money and come to freezing cold Geneva in December. But I think that we should still strive to get more people involved physically, we should drive to get more people part of the actual you IGF community and other communities as well in the IGF space.
On top of that it is difficult, if you are not committed to these ideas in this area, to wake up at 5:00 a.m. and be on these streams, not knowing if your question or your idea you are putting out there is ever going to be heard by the people on the panel. Because, you know, the panel might be something that is very, very hot and exciting and new; and everybody's there and everybody has questions and everybody has ideas. And yeah, there might be one, two questions from online, but if 25 people online are asking questions, there is a chance that you woke up at 5:00 a.m. without having the opportunity to have your voice heard.
So, I think it's crucial to continue doing it and I think we should think about ways to make online participation worth it for the people that are part of it. And make it so that they are not just feeling like they are second‑class participants.
>> PANELIST: Weighing in on David's take on this. We should rethink models of online participation. It is nice that we have Webex for IGF for online participants to join. But it is a platform also that you should study for a while in order to see you how to engage with it. Like, how to comment in it.
And you also have to rely on the online moderator to read your question at the moment of the workshop. Just to make sure that you are being heard. Maybe rethinking ways of online participation on this note: Thinking about more open platforms and more usable for us, like the native, in air quotes, digital native generation would be a way of improving it.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Okay. We have one, two, three. Four. More.
>> DAVID MORAR: Yay, questions.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Okay, we can start over there and go around.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning, I am Brian from South Africa. Sort of like a question and most probably a proposal. I see we have got a lot of colleagues from Brazil. I understand you guys have a Youth IGF in Brazil. One of the topics spoke about in diversity is most probably proposing an IGF of the Global South. I was wondering if you could share how you guys managed to establish your branch to bring a lot of guys to the IGF this year. Also, can try and connect with each other, Global South countries so we can also include a lot of guys from the South as well. Thank you.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Okay. Before answering, I am going to go around around then get back to our speakers so we can move a little faster. So, next question? There. You.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Rebecca (?) Tanzania. I would like to engage. Of youth, maybe the online participation ongoing, speaking from my country's perspective, most of my people don't speak English. Those who do, they speak very little English. They are Swahili oriented. So, if I were to follow an online conversation in English, I wouldn't be able to follow. Another thing I would like to comment on: There is an issue about how to make Internet governance more practical, more personal to a person. If I ran workshops on IGF in my country, the challenge I get from most people is why should they care about that. It is more technical stuff, you are telling me about privacy, security. All of this is complex. How does it directly affect me. How do you make it practical to this person.
I know a lot of youth online, social media ‑‑ most ever us have phones, gadgets, all of them connected online. In my country, when I see the drivers of the local motorcycles that ferry people, have mobile phones, so, they are connected to this thing. It is supposed to be of importance to them. But how do we make it look practical to them for them to see that it is something that they care about. That is the most mind‑boggling question I have every day. I would like to hear from you: How do you drive the point home that they need to care about IG? Thank you.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Other questions? Okay. He and then she and then she.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. I am Noha, IGF fellow from Egypt. I need your recommendations regarding two things: One, how to keep in touch with the people we meet here until the next IGF; and the other, how to approach sponsors if we need to need to join the next IGF.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Next one here, the girl over there? Okay.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. So in my group we talked about diversity in between the Global South and how this was a problem here. Because mostly the Global North does not consider the differences between the countries in the Global South. What could be a solution for this, like a Global South IGF would be nice as he said. But what can the youth do to improve the situation?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, Edward from Hong Kong IGF. Hong Kong is relatively developed city. But actually for the Internet governance stuff and the knowledge base of this kind of issue; and I think even for the university students they don't have much getting in touch of it. So I just wonder if it is effective or efficient to add some element into the university curriculum; just like for the Common Core. From different departments they still can have one or two courses about the Youth IGF stuff or imply just done by (?) society. I know that it is a worldwide IGF; but just different countries, different regions, there are not that many people involved in it. So I wonder: Is it still protocol or just efficient that promoting IGF by civil society is critical?
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: We are going to have to run a little bit over. You and her and . . .
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello everyone I am Aja (?) from Senegal. I want to talk about online participation. I want to know how many people at the beginning participate and how many still participate until the end? If I take my example, in my country, I had problems to for example follow our webinars. Even if you have a 4G connection, I have thousands of problems because I can't hear people. So I should wait until the end of the webinar to upload . . . to download the video. And, with that, I can't participate or give my opinions. So, how to ensure that the online participation actually goes well. How to measure the ‑‑ like to keep people participating and why not think about many bringing back conferences in which we ensure all youth who were here, organize a small seminar in their country for people who couldn't attend or a post seminar in which they can take questions, advice and bring it here. It is a bit difficult for people to follow online and for others it can be difficult to join the forum.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Okay. We have a little bit of problem with the time. I won't be able to pass to the other questions. I am going to pass to the speakers for them to just answer really briefly and make final remarks. But we are going to be here around, so we can talk and answer all of the other questions that we have. So, please be brief.
>> PANELIST: I just wanted to touch on the question how to make it practical. I think that is a very important issue. From my point of view, what is important is that there has to be like basic visibility and basic education on that there is such a thing as IG and then surely with ‑‑ like with any type of engagement, there are only so many people who will stick with it, concentrate the time, money and effort to stay involved. But then we don't have the problem of representation if we keep addressing the same people and the same privileged groups of people they don't really have a choice; the bigger public does not have a choice.
I don't think there is a way to break it down as simply you so that everyone can be involved in the same way but you that wouldn't ‑‑ I mean that is not the goal anyway. It is important to get those involved care and who have a genuine interest in participating. Those we don't want to don't have to. It is always problematic I think trying to make things too simple because then we would lack accountability and wouldn't be heard in big fora like this. That is my comment on that.
>> PANELIST: The question about whether it is practical to add Internet issues to the university curriculum, I think of course it serves as an introduction to the issue. I think it is practical. Because from Hong Kong perspective, we do not talk about issues ‑‑ if you take the curriculum, it is not very social, it is technical. People know about ICANN, those things. If you wanted to touch on other areas, like social aspects, instead of technical because not everyone studies technical things. I think that it's also important to address the social side, like how social media affects our behaviors or daily habits or how does it shape our thinking or behavior. Like these are things that we do on a daily basis that we don't technically think about. So, having an introduction to it I think would be good.
And about the question on how to bridge like different communities like Global South or North, I think from my experience in Hong Kong, we organized the Asia‑Pacific version of the youth IGF and people from Hong Kong have a different experience from people in the Phillipines. In Hong Kong they are well connected, in the Philippines some areas are are connected, some are not. How do we build those experiences together is to bring them into the global IGF. So, I think localization is important because the experiences of different communities, different regions are different. And then if you want to talk about that, you obviously have to be in one forum and one initiative.
>> PANELIST: Starting from the North‑South question, this was something brought up in our group discussion. Also, whenever I attend any ICANN forum or Internet governance related on a more international level, I tend to see that, whenever you have these discussions, they don't have in consideration the South's point of view. So, this is something we all have in common: We all feel like not really taken into consideration when you start to discuss Internet governance or like more specific subjects. On this note, in Brazil, like from the past years, it has been a construction for years and I remember a while ago being an intern at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brazil and listening to my bosses telling me they came to IGF in 2009 and advocated for the decalogue, the Ten Principles of Internet governance, a document that the Brazilian Steering Committee wrote at the time. Time, printed out the Declaration, sent it to everybody, told people about it just so people knew how important it was to have more people joining the discussion other than just the government or like the ones who were doing it.
It is not practical to (?) civil society exclusively so we need to reach out to other stakeholders. Last but not least: How to get sponsors, youth (?) has organized youth (?) in the year. We wrote to Google saying: Hi, Google, we are a group of young people trying to organize Internet governance forum. Can you give us five dollars, ten dollars, whatever you want? So, you just have to put yourselves forward and write emails and say hi, I am here.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: We know it is not easy but you have to try.
>> Yes.
(Chuckles)
>> DAVID MORAR: I promise to be brief and that is not a joke. What I think is important is to think of yourselves as a great resource for others and think of others as a great resource for yourself. Think about how you would you keep in touch with each other as you did if you didn't meet each other at IGF.
Keep the people that you meet here in your social networks; keep them in your phones as contacts. Keep them as ‑‑ your friends from around the world. Yes, you are here to do IGF stuff. You and the person that you met from around the world have the same ideas or have different ideas but like to talk about a specific issue in IG. But you are also going to end up being friends at one point. The best way to keep in contact with people you meet at IGF is to treat them as your friends.
Yes, it is important that you are a resource and they are your resource. But you will have amazing connections with people from around the world that otherwise you may not have access to. So, the best to keep in touch is to be at a human level with these people and say, well, now we are friends; we are going to talk about IGF stuff; we are going to meet at wherever IGF happens next year if we both get funding. But, regardless of that, we are going to continue talking as friends, as human. That is the best way to keep in touch.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: That is awesome. Great remarks, everyone. I would have made a piece of advice that David already made: Keep in touch, keep connected. For the last thing I would like to invite Guillermmo from the Youth Observatory to talk a little about one of the projects that is going to be launched ntoday. You have two, three minutes.
>> GUILLERMO: Hello, everyone ‑‑
>> I want to say something before: All of the youth fellows, listen here now, because I want you to be part of the initiative too. So, please your attention is required here.
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: Also, one last thing, we are going to take a picture at the end. So everyone, stay around for us to take one picture together.
>> Selfie, whoo.
>> GUILLERMO: Hi, everyone. Thank you, Paula ,for introducing me. I am a Brazilian journalist. Well, the book is the final result of this open call for articles that we made earlier this year. It's been an amazing and sometimes tough experience for us.
Well, we selected 19 articles from 23 Latin American youths, mainly women. Those articles are academic papers, opinion papers, essays, interviews; and they discuss things like digital inclusion, cybersecurity content gender; and we are very proud of this project. We hope this is the first one of many others. We seek to show the strength of youth; what we are doing in our communities, what we are thinking; what we are proposing on Internet governance issues.
So, you are now receiving this, the three versions, Spanish, Portuguese and English. Please check our website as well, share your networks. Outside we have a few copies, unfortunately not enough for everyone, but please feel free to take one. We do hope for feedback and . . . well, thank you very much and I hope you like it.
(Applause)
>> PAULA CÔRTE-REAL: So, thank you, everyone. Let's take our picture there. So, let's go. It can be here in the back.
>> We also have books if you want a copy, we might have a copy for you.