Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 28, 2011 - 09:00AM
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. 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 session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Hello, everyone. We are just waiting for a few more panelists. So we will be about five minutes.
>> Good morning, everyone. I would like to bring this session to a start because it's 9:00. We would like to welcome you very warmly to this session and thank you for coming. My name is Lucinda. And our youth IGF project is absolutely delighted to be cohosting this session with the KiBO Foundation. Today we will be thinking about the challenges to access and also the opportunities that access provides from a youth perspective.
We have a large and fantastically varied set of international panelists who I would like to introduce. I'm joined by Alannah, who is sitting over here and Jonathan Ebuk, Dr. Kambugo and Patricia Ayo Otoa and Nina Shalita. And Will Gardiner, the CEO at Childnet International and Alex Everett, Rebecca Cawthorne, Dan Skipper, Jack Passmore, and Nicola Douglas. We have Pepper Green. So a lot of speakers here today. As I'm sure you will all have seen, this session is a merged workshop. It's a merged workshop between the Youth IGF Project and the KiBO Foundation. We shared the belief that the Internet offers all users a fantastic opportunity and that's why we merged our sessions. And that shared belief is at the heart of our joint workshop this morning.
Alex, who is one of our youth delegates here today, said in the discussion in the prep, that ideas don't always have solutions. It will be in that spirit that we will be conducting this morning's workshop.
We are going to hear also from some of our panelists about some of the solutions, plans and projects and initiatives that they think could put a change forward in this area and challenge some of those obstacles and also we look forward to hearing all of your thoughts in this session as well and there will be a time for discussion.
I would like to pass over to KiBO who will introduce themselves.
>> FREIDA: My name is Freida, and I'm going to give an introduction of the KiBO Foundation. The KiBO Foundation was established in 2007 as a charitable organization that offers ICT and leadership training to youth age 13 to 30 years, the computer‑based skills and leadership training. So they are encouraged to apply whatever skills they get from their ICT training to the real life world. Here we are talking about youth in less developed countries, some of whom have never seen or touched a computer. So this is the first time they are touching a keyboard and a mouse. So we expose them. We encourage them to practically apply whatever skills they are picking from the ICT training.
For instance, when they get on to ‑‑ when they get on to the Internet, they are told how to search for job opportunities, but we take it even further. They look for real job opportunities. They are given an opportunity to ‑‑ to sit for interviews within the program. So all this happens between age 2 to 15 weeks. It's practical and experiential.
And the KiBO Foundation tries to make its program accessible to all youth. The only requirement is that you should have basic literacy skills. It doesn't matter whether you've had ‑‑ you have reached grade seven or grade whatever, but as long as you have basic literacy skills. So that gives many of the youth an ability to access our program.
The KiBO Foundation undertook a survey to find out where its best students were and from this study, it was discovered that 90% of the youth who had gone through the KiBO program were engaged in one way or another and these statistics attracted the international development research center to carry out a study. A study that was carried out by MMakerere University, and find out about what led to such a high engagement rate.
So this study looks at initiatives that use modern ICTs to train and empower the youth, such as ours, the KiBO Foundation. And it's attempted among others to find out what have been the key drivers of success of the KiBO program. What lessons can be drawn from the KiBO model and experiences, and what are the implications of KiBO's work and experiences for policy engagement in the areas of ICT, youth education, and empowerment models in general.
I will highlight some items from this study. The study included other initiatives from the East African region from Kenya, from Tanzania and from Rwanda and among the lessons learned were that practical ICT skills are the foundation for today that enable the youth to be effective in their workplace and efficient in the enterprises that they initiate.
Another lesson was that youth empowerment models that offer practical skills have a great potential for successfully equipping the youth to be productively engaged either by themselves or to gain employment.
Some of the implications and recommendations from the study for governments included mainstreaming youth strategies and policies, so that they can cut across all success, strengthening and resource government structures that are tasked with overseeing national youth programs, promote public/private partnerships to implement programs targeting the youth, and promote pulling off resources, as well as initiatives that mobilize servings and promote capitalization of youth enterprises.
Some of these recommendations are very exciting for us, because I was just talking to the director of Childnet and I was saying that the children that Childnet deals with eventually become youth, and there are many areas where we can find ways of working together with different organizations that even deal with children, because they eventually progress into the youth stage.
Some of the implications and recommendations for KiBO and other youth initiatives, first one was to scale up the KiBO model across the East African model, in different countries, and in different districts, to scale up successful youth initiatives in the region as a whole, to scale up ICT knowledge for youth empowerment to improve competitiveness, employability and self‑employment. To emphasize multiskilling for youths and in addition to imparting knowledge and skills, focus on attitude change through counseling, internships and mentorship.
Thank you very much. That's a brief introduction of the KiBO Foundation.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Freida. I would like to pass it over.
>> First of all, I would like to thank Childnet for inviting me today. It's inspired by the work done by Childnet. And also, I'm very excited about meeting all of the brave young people who have traveled a long way to give us their opinions and some very relevant aspects of Internet Governance. To cut it short, I'm from the Media Council for Children and Young People. It is in this capacity that we have established a youth panel, in order to give the young people in Denmark a say on matters regarding the use and the future of online technologies. Our youth panel has been running since 2009 and consists of 10 young people where some have stayed since the beginning and others are newcomers. The members of the panel are between 12 and 15 years and selected, of course, because of their interest in the Internet and online technologies.
A major point to our youth participation work is Internet Governance issues, such as privacy, security, openness, diversity and access. Which in short, we talk about the rates and the responsibilities of an individual in relationship to the development of the Internet. This might sound a little dry and slightly abstract, but nonetheless, it is our experience that these very issues are an excellent approach to engage young people in the opportunities and challenges brought along by the merging online technologies.
But most importantly, I'm here today to represent our members of the youth panel in Denmark. So my remarks and comments are both based on short interviews, made with selected members of our youth panel and the specific topics for today, but also they are gained in knowledge, gained at previous events and debate involving the youth panel.
Among these can be mentioned the Danish Youth IGA events from both 2010 and 011, which was very inspired by the Childnet, a meeting with Facebook, round table debate and other issues in Denmark. Once again, thank you for the invitation. I will do my best to bring forth the thought and the opinion of the Danish Youth Panel in this session.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. And Will.
>> WILL: I want to give an introduction to Childnet, our organization, and to share a little bit of the background to this particular project which has been running for a number of years now.
First of all, Childnet, we are a children's charity and we are based in London, and our mission statement is to help make the Internet a great and safe place for children. We are also part of the UK Safer Internet Center and so joined the network of European Safer Internet Centers across the EU.
Our work is mainly in the education and the policy space. We have an education team and we have Pepper and Lindsay here with us today and they go into schools to talk to children and young people, and talk to parents and talk to teachers. And it's ‑‑ it's a talk which is looking at, well, what is the potential for the Internet? What are the opportunities? What are you using it for? As well as equipping the audience with the skills and the practical knowledge they need so they can keep safe and look after themselves and others while they are using technology.
So it's about the safe and the responsible use of technology. And we are always very conscious within these sessions to listen to the voice of young people as the sessions go forward. We work in the policy space and we are members of the UK Council for Child internet Safety, as well as working with industry players and others. So ‑‑ we are on the Facebook Safety Advisory with Board too.
This particular project started in 2009, the Youth IGF project, and the project is really in response to the criticism at the early IGF that youth's voice wasn't there, wasn't represented. So we have ‑‑ we have worked since 2009 ‑‑ this is our third IGF now where we have been involving the voice of youth in these sessions, and we know that young people are very active users of technology and we are going to hear from the young people in a minute. They are often pioneers in this Internet space, and it is important in this multistakeholder discussion that is the IGF that young people do have that voice to influence the future of the technology as it ‑‑ as it evolves, is it will directly affect them.
I remember a session we did early on in the project where we brought young people together with industry representatives and members of the House of Parliament in the UK, where there was a round table and there was a sharing of views between the young people and the policymakers and one of the industry representatives afterwards came up to me and said, you know, I found that session really interesting, and I've got two or three credible business ideas having listened to the young people.
That wasn't at all the intention of the meeting to generate business ideas, but I think it was really interesting because it demonstrated how the voice of young people could influence the services which young people are using, the environment they are using and I think that voice is useful to influence the industry, also governments, but also the sector ‑‑ the NGO sector, which I work in. So we are very proud to be able to bring eight young people across to ‑‑ to Nairobi and to the IGF and Kenya.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Well, we are going to be considering the opportunities and challenges and we wanted to start with the opportunities before we move on to challenges so we know exactly what it is that young people are missing out on if they are not able to get online.
So I would like to go to our youth panelists who are going to introduce themselves. Introduce yourself with your name, how old you are, where you are from and a very brief opportunity. Becca, can I start with you?
>> BECCA CAWTHORNE: I'm Becca Cawthorne, I'm 16 and I'm from Leeds in Yorkshire and the Internet has offered me lots of opportunities and being involved in this is one of those opportunities. I did reporting online with work experience, and they put me forward for this. So them being online and being in contact with Childnet has got me involved in that. So that's one opportunity.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Alex?
>> ALEX EVERETT: Hi there. I'm Alex Everett. I'm 17 from Southwest England and the Internet is something I could not live without. I use it all the time on my SmartPhone. I can spread my message, through YouTube and the social networks and it's an opportunity for me to really actually present myself online, hopefully in a positive way. And as my work with Childnet over the last three years, it's really given me a standing point to really improve on this and help my friends as well.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Nicola.
>> NICOLA DOUGLAS: Hi, I'm Nicola Douglas, and I come from Edinburgh in Scotland. If I share an opinion or idea on the Internet, I get more than I put in and the original idea I had will be recycled and reused and I can benefit from it more and benefiting from the expertise of other people is one of the great opportunities the Internet brings for me.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, and Jack.
>> JACK PASSMORE: Hi there, I'm Jack. I'm 15 from Devon in the Southwest of England. The Internet provides opportunities for communication, gaming, entertainment, the possibilities are endless, really.
It all depends on where you are trying to access the Internet from, as a few mentioned in our London summer camp, broadband is not everywhere and in some places it isn't strong either. We can use the Internet for what we want to and then tailor it for our individual needs.
>> MODERATOR: Matt, can I come from here?
>> MATTHEW JACKMAN: I'm Matthew Jackman from Cumbria. It offers me a valuable amount of knowledge and it allows me to communicate with my family. I was born in Scotland, and this is a great help to me so I can feel connected with them and it allows me to feel connected.
>> MODERATOR: Alannah.
>> ALANNAH TRAVERS: I'm Alannah Travers and I think the Internet offers me a great sense of community and I'm able to learn things that I wouldn't necessarily learn in Devon. At the click of the mouse, I can go to a news page and know exactly what's going on in the world.
>> MODERATOR: Dan.
>> DAN SKIPPER: My name is Dan Skipper, I'm from the Channel Islands, part of the British Isles. The opportunities the Internet gives me are such as a revision for GCC exams which are very important at the moment, research for any subject that I want. I can use my voice on news web sites and such. So pretty much everything can be done on the Internet for me.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, and Connor.
>> CONNOR DALBY: Hi, my name is Connor Dalby, I live in Devon, England. I believe the Internet can provide the privilege for so much information and knowledge. It gives users the worldwide communication and is basically an essential tool to life.
>> MODERATOR: I think you all mentioned some the absolutely great opportunities which we will touch on more in this session. Things that particularly resonated with me were, Nicola talking about the opportunity to share knowledge and knowledge being recycled. I think that's something we hope to do today. Alannah, you spoke about communication and the fact that you can showcase yourself. Alex, and Connor, you said it's a privilege to access so much information. I think that's something that we will explore later in this session. Not all users are afforded the same access and to the Internet and so when we can access it freely and readily, it is a privilege.
And this leads us very nicely into the first question I would like to pose to our youth panelists today. The question is: Do you think that the opportunities that the Internet affords you are the same for all people or do different users get different opportunities? And I would like to come to Matthew first. Matthew made a very interesting point in one of our preparatory discussion sessions when he likened the Internet to a room with a lot of locked doors. Matthew, can you tell us more about that?
>> MATTHEW JACKMAN: Okay. So to use an analogy to answer this question, the Internet is like a room with millions of locked doors. Each door being an opportunity or a piece of information on the Internet. If you have the key for the door or know how to access the opportunity, you could use it. However, because there are so many doors, and you don't have all the keys, most opportunities are inaccessible. Every individual has ‑‑ only has a set amount of keys. So everybody has different opportunities depending on how ‑‑ depending on what they know how to access. Therefore, the Internet favors those who are more skilled and confident on the Internet.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So when we were talking about that, we likened keys to circumstance. And Nicola, you said you think different users get different opportunities. In your experience, what are the circumstances which dictate the opportunities that are presented to users?
>> NICOLA DOUGLAS: Well, in my experience, I find that the main circumstances which are barriers to preventing people getting on the Internet are censorship, language, economic background and age. In countries where there is censorship, obviously, getting on to different web sites is a problem, communicating with people across the world is virtually impossible in some places. In regards to language, according to a study released earlier this year, conducted by Euro Barometer, 44% of users questioned felt they were missing something online because online ‑‑ the web sites were not in a language which they understood. The example that springs to mind personally, when thinking of economic background as a barrier is the newspapers that set up pay walls. It's not a great idea to set up a pay wall because you are restricting the number of people who can actually access your ‑‑ access the service that you are providing and some users are simply not in the financial position to access the opportunity.
And then as for age being a barrier, Internet users under the age of 13 are not able to go on Facebook which is a problem for people of the younger generation.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. And some absolutely fantastic statistics in there.
And Lorna you previously mentioned that everyone has the same opportunities online, but it's their choice about what they use.
>> LORNA: I think everyone has the same opportunities and they choose different ones depending on who they are. So if I wanted to go into a recipe web site, and, you know, choose supper, I would rather leave that for my mom to do and if she wanted to, she could go on a social media web site. She probably wouldn't choose to.
>> MODERATOR: So some very interesting thoughts on choice there. What did we choose to do when we go online? Becca, you said something very interesting in one of our sessions. When we were talking about positive actions and you said, positive action by individuals would lead to better opportunities. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
>> BECCA CAWTHORNE: Well, I think the way people use the Internet dictates what their opportunities are to get out of it. If using the Internet to promote yourself in a positive way, people are more likely to look at you seriously and think, okay, I want to involve them in more things; whereas, if you are using social networking site to bully someone or just to promote yourself in a nasty way, swearing a lot, you will obviously not get noticed as much for the right reasons.
>> MODERATOR: Yeah. And I think you are going to tell us a bit later about some of the positive opportunities. Are there any that you want to mention really briefly now?
>> BECCA CAWTHORNE: Like coming here. Yeah, I promoted myself by video blogging online, on a reporting site that was set up for schools and they noticed me out of that. And then put me forward to Childnet. I promoted myself in that, and I got noticed. So if you do stuff like that, more likely to get noticed for new things.
>> MODERATOR: Alex, it strikes me that Becca is probably quite a confident Internet user and you have spoken about confidence before, and that being a factor in terms of what people do online and how it affects opportunity. Can you tell us more about your thoughts on that?
>> ALEX EVERETT: Definitely. Confidence is key here. Everyone knows how to use the Internet, interested, motivated to do so. But if all of us who maybe aren't so motivated like ‑‑ I hate to use my mother as an example, but that's true. She's genuinely quite scared of the Internet. Even if it's a simple error message which we might cancel is another thing putting them off using the Internet. The thing is that's why the use of apps for SmartPhones are so important. They have made it accessible for people who otherwise would not be online. The more of that we can get in motion in the coming years, that will help to bring access to more people, I think.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Camilla, I would like to pass over to you now and share with us the thoughts of some of the Danish young people.
>> CAMILLA: Yes, I think in general, the young people from our youth panel in Denmark, they identify opportunities along with simple possibles or just even what Internet can ‑‑ in the sense that what you can do online is an opportunity. So this is not an overly optimistic conclusion, but more to say that the youth panel defined opportunities that's everyday life for them. So it's not something special. So one could say that the Internet is nothing but opportunities.
One of our members of the youth panel called Alexander, who is the most recent member of our panel, stated that opportunities are communicating with other people around the world, making money without a big investment, playing online games and getting hold of information.
For Sebastian who has been on the panel since the beginning says that opportunities is to about to play game, to communicate and about the possibility to know what's going on in the world. So I think in short if you ask the young members of our youth panel about the opportunities the Internet offers, they will simply say as the media did, the Internet works very well.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. And Hannah, are there any comments that have been fed in remotely that you would like to share at this point?
>> HANNAH: Unfortunately, we are currently having any technical difficulties but we hope to have it back on track. I hope they will be with us soon.
>> MODERATOR: Fantastic. We'll keep coming back to you.
I would like to ask how being online now gives you a voice. Becca, I would like to come you to first.
>> BECCA CAWTHORNE: I think being online helps you to be able to share ‑‑ to share your opinion with a wider audience. So without being online, you probably wouldn't be able to get your message across to maybe 20 or 30 people that you know, but by putting it on a forum or a chatroom, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of people will be able to read it and find out what you think and also comment back and build up your opinion as well as their own.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. And Dan, I know you had some thoughts on this.
>> DAN SKIPPER: Yeah. In my opinion, everyone should be given the same opportunities on the Internet, but we know this is not the case. Sorry. Whether it's because of the area a person lives in, the education they receive or whether they have a disability, certain people can struggle to access the Internet in ways others can't.
>> MODERATOR: Fantastic. Thank you. An Nicola, you made a point that being online in itself doesn't give a person their voice, but rather it gives them the opportunity to use their voice and I think that ties in a lot with what Freida was saying about giving people an opportunity. Do you have anything you would like to add on that?
>> NICOLA DOUGLAS: Well, yeah. I was going to say, I believe ‑‑ the Internet doesn't give a person a voice but facilitates them in a greater way. For some people, for people who are victims of abuse, oppression, those who are house bound, people in poverty, and the Internet, when they are able to access it will give them a voice. I think for the majority of people, it merely gives them the ability to state their thoughts and opinions in a greater way, as they would offline as well.
>> MODERATOR: And so Alex, you mentioned a flip side when we were talking about this, the fact that the Internet does give people a voice and I know Will spoke about digital citizenship and Camilla spoke about responsibilities what is the dark side of voice?
>> ALEX EVERETT: Yes, voice is an interesting thing. People have a sense of unaccountability. They find they are hidden behind their computer screens and therefore this newly found voice is used by them ‑‑ it's not as flaming. It's an unsavory kind of behavior. Sometimes people do it for the sake of it. They put unnecessary comments on videos or whatever and it can get a lot worse than that, when you get serious cyber abuse. And the trouble is this is facilitated by the Internet, but it doesn't mean necessarily the Internet is wrong, but very often the media will jump top conclusions like that and that's why we have these kind of rumors that we have to dispel.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. And jack, do you think it's always serious matters that people use the Internet to share their voice on or are there other things?
>> JACK PASSMORE: It's up to debate, really, but I feel that it's usually trivial matter that people seem to talk about, to have their voice on the Internet. But it's global ventures such as the IGF here that allow people to have the voice that's taken seriously, and so that people actually listen to them.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So some very interesting and some very different view points from all of our young people and I think it's encouraging that everyone has a different view point.
And Camilla, can we come over to you to hear what Danish young people think the Internet gives them a voice?
>> CAMILLA: Yes, they are very much like you guys. I think most of our members of the youth panel agree that being online gives them a voice. For them, it's more a question on how or to what extent it gives them a voice. For them, it's not a voice in a political sense but more in the sense they have the ability to reach out to many people or friends at the same time. So as Alexander says, yes, you can with relative ease get stuff out to the whole world. We have, for example, YouTube. You can also just chat with friends from stuff like Facebook, Google plus or Skype or Amelia who has been with us for almost a year, she says when being online, for example, Facebook, it gives me a direct channel to all of my friends. We can communicate in an easy and quick way.
On the other hand, the member of our youth panel, who are talking about the future of the Internet. So this, of course, not directly linked to having a voice online, but I think Becca talked about it before, but it is how, on how to get the voice out there. So I think the point is that the opportunity to be heard is there. It's just not always easy to figure out how to make this come true. As Sebastian puts it, yes, in some way or another, it gives me a voice, but I'm not very good at using it. Mostly, I just chat with friends.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. And I would like to pass over to Jonathan now, where he's going to talk about opportunities and his experience.
>> JONATHAN EBUK: Thank you very much. I want to speak in reference to what the KiBO program is all about. And first of all, I'm John that, I'm a with KiBO, and I'm a certified trainer with Intel. Looking at the KiBO program, it's all about creating opportunities and preparing the youth to survive the future through technology. And, you know, the Internet is the future.
The youth have the energy and the inquisitive mind to learn. They have ‑‑ they can adapt to new ideas at any time. Therefore, the KiBO program challenges them to walk and think creatively. Looking at the Internet here, it's a resource and a tool while at the KiBO program. So here are some of the opportunities that I put down that are afforded by attending educational programs like the KiBO Foundation. As we know, it's a leadership program. Leadership is a verb. And one of the greatest opportunities of this program is employment and entrepreneurial opportunities. The KiBO program encourages the youth to focus on their passion, and how you discover your passion? It's by going through a series of events and the KiBO program is tailored in a way that the youth that go through this program are given opportunity to air out their views. They are given an opportunity to discover themselves, and they are given opportunity to explore the world through the Internet: So the Internet is the future and affording programs like KiBO, you are exposing the youth to real life experiences and you are giving them the best you can.
So as part of the applied ICT skills that the youth obtain at the KiBO program, they are given relevant work experiences. The Internet is part of every‑day living, and as part of everyday living, you have to work. So you need to have real life skills, using ‑‑ let's say ICT skills. When you go to work, the skills you learned at KiBO are the skills you are going to apply in the workplace.
You all know the opportunity is also embedded somewhere on the worldwide web. Everything is there, how to bring a proposal, how to bring a business plan, how to write your resume, how to make a powerful presentation, everything is on the Internet. The opportunities we look at when we see the Internet, it's very ‑‑ it's a revolution. Without the Internet, our lives would be very different. We would be living, let's say, about 20 years back.
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And you sort it out. So at KiBO, the Internet is part of everyday living, I will say that again. So we are going through the KiBO program, the youth get a roadmap to securing the future. You know, when you are a youth, you have dreams but if you can't put the dots together, you will not know where you are going.
So this program is tailored for youth between 18 and 35 who are trying to discover themselves. Many youth as they are growing up, they want to say, I want to be a doctor. I want to be a businessman. I want to be an engineer, but they don't know how to get there. So by the time you are 18, you still don't know where you are going. So when you come to the KiBO program, we try to put the dots together. We get you to work on a team. We get you to interact with people from different walks of life. We guest to you listen to stories of people that have made it in life.
You know, in Africa, we have very successful businessmen. If we get the businessman to come and share their life experience and motivate the youth, it's something very big. As well the youth can go online and read about these people. When you go to Wikipedia today, you can get so much information. So the Internet is the future, and the youth are the future.
Another thing I would like to outline about the KiBO program is mentorship opportunities. You know, as you are growing up, if you don't have a mentor, you have a lot of challenges, and we believe mentors make you a better person. You learn through other people's mistakes. You learn through what other people have been through. So this you can also get online. You can get mentorship. There are self‑help books online. There are books about ‑‑ you know, there's so much that you can get online, and all this has been tailored in a way that the KiBO program looks at every aspect of life that you need to survive the future.
Then there's one of the biggest opportunities about the KiBO program. It's not just about ICT and the Internet, but there's something about the community. You know, the community is where everybody comes from, common unity. If you understand where you are coming from, then you can know where you are going and to be a successful businessman, you need to understand the community. And at KiBO, the community we focus on giving back. Whatever you do, you need to give back in order to make it big, real big. So as part of the ‑‑ the students use the Internet to fund raise for activities, like I just had somebody talk about Facebook. They create fine pages about an event. Let's say it's a charity, and they use the Internet to market ideas of giving back.
So the Internet and the KiBO Foundation program move hand in hand. They are married in one way or another because the Internet is the future, and at KiBO the youth are the future. That's why we say no youth left behind. We all need to move. That's why today there's the Internet. If you don't have ICT skills, then you are left behind.
So it's one thing that we all need to focus on is how to bring the best out of these youth, and the KiBO program tries to do that with each youth that comes through the program.
Lastly, I would like to conclude by saying that the youth have a guidance and grow through life skills. You know, the Internet may be technical skills but there are life skills. Some of the skills you expect the youth to learn at home, but they don't. Like something to do with confidence. How do you build your self‑esteem? You know, they say small things make a difference of the little things that people ignore always make a big difference. So as part of the life skills program, we teach the youth how to educate about life. How do you make eye contact? How do you make a firm handshake? And how do you say hello without being aggressive.
To be in business and customer service, there's so many things that are in the life skills. So this program, we move hand in hand with the Internet. I'm very happy with what Childnet is doing. We will do a lot together, looking at how we can expand the youth of the Internet in Africa. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Hannah, can I come back to you? How are we doing with our remote participants?
>>> Hannah: The remote participation is up and working. We have hubs from Pakistan and some other individuals as well. Currently no questions but I will let you know if there are.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So one of the things that Jonathan just said was that all you have to do is to have an Internet connection, and I think that's very true but there are challenges in getting online. Alex touched on the barriers when he said that for some individuals, managing their online experience can be very hard, and the Internet can be a threatening place, but we know that there's still people who aren't online, and we'd like to think about some of their obstacles.
Connor, I would like to come you to first. What is it that you think is the main obstacle that stops people coming online, particularly young people?
>> CONNOR DALBY: Well, I think it ‑‑ the main point is motivation. A lot of people, especially the older generations have this lack of understanding and feel uneducated about the Internet. They feel that because they don't understand it, they don't know all the benefits about it, they feel fearful of it, and that limits them to what they can do. This frustrates me and I think they are missing out on so many of these benefits. And I know that this is a lot of ‑‑ this applies to the older generation, but as youth, it's their future of us being adults is only a few years away and unless something is done, and especially at the rate of the Internet moving forward so quickly, we are going to be left behind as well.
And I think that unless we create some sort of support service and unless ‑‑ as youths we are well educated and able to find out the newest way to adapt the Internet, we will just be left behind when we are older.
>> MODERATOR: We had a conversation beforehand and motivation was one of the themes. How does motivation factor with your young people? Do they think it is a factor.
>> Camilla: I think I have to rewind a little bit and start with the challenges. We made a survey last year. One of the questions were very similar to this, about challenges. And what was most remarkable about the answers to this similar question was either the children do not think that there are any challenges, we have to remember in Denmark, the access to online Internet is very much for everyone. So access is not an issue here.
But also, they most identify these obstacles for an individual user. This means that they are often accounted for, as you mentioned before, Alex, a fear of new technology or simply a lack of knowledge on how to do it.
So this would, along the way, feed actual lack of motivation in the sense that they will never come to know about all of the advantages the online technologies offers. That was kind of the basic outcome of this survey. But, in general, I think our youth panel don't think there are so many challenges in the sense they are very happy, but in their mind if you have access, you have the opportunities. That's how it goes.
So as one of them says, that I don't think there are any big challenges for users of the Internet, as long as they know how to use a computer. So that's kind of implicit for them. They know how to use a computer. Everyone just knows that. That was their point to that.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I would like to open the discussion up to the floor at this point, to hear what everyone thinks the challenges are for coming online from where you come from, but before I do that, I will go first to Nicola to start us off.
>> NICOLA DOUGLAS: Well, I think, as Connor said, one of the biggest barriers is motivation. 64% in the UK, I think it's 9 million adults and 64% are not online because of motivation. A further 23% which is the next step down is because of cost, and although, you know the poverty in the UK is nothing compared to in other countries. Where I come from, in the areas of Galloway and central Glasgow, the Internet is an affordable luxury. They don't feel motivated to get online and on top of that, it's too expensive. They don't see how it relates to them and they don't see that ‑‑ to put a small amount of money in towards considerably a small amount of money in the long run in towards getting the Internet or getting a computer would help them so much more in the future and ‑‑ (No audio).
>> JONATHAN EBUK: Over there, who say the older generation is cleared with the Internet. I would like to believe that the Internet right now is our second world and the challenges that are present on the Internet are also present in new rights and therefore if crimes can be committed online, the older generation is actually right and justified to ‑‑ to be afraid.
Secondary, I think there was an issue of children under the age of 13 have problems getting online. I would like to believe in my view, that is not a problem. I think for several reasons, it's unfair that they delay their usage of the Internet. Why am I saying this? Studies have shown that new users of the Internet are the ones that fall prey to scums on Internet and therefore, guiding our children with the way they use the Internet is the right thing for parents to do.
Again, coming from Malawi and I think this is the trend in Africa, the mobile telephone is actually gaining a lot of ground and I think the innovations right now, the mobile phones that are coming, one is able to use the Internet with the mobile phones, even the cheaper ones from ‑‑ from Asia that are flooding the markets.
Now, with the coming in ‑‑ with the booming of the mobile telephone, what we have seen is now some form of addiction, on the part of the young people. I think this is no longer a usage, but an addiction, where the young people use the social media, the Facebook, the Twitter, morning up to the following day, and this is quite worry, because one, we have to have so many needs, time for education and so on. This is worrying for parents.
Again, in terms ‑‑
>> MODERATOR: Can I comment on that point there about addiction. It's something that we discuss quite a lot at youth camp and there's a session that's going to take place tomorrow afternoon, it's number 92, and I believe that addiction is going to be one of the things that's covered in more detail and that thinking about some of the myths about young people and the Internet, and it's going to sound quite strict but we are quite short of time. So addiction is something I would like to steer away from in this workshop because I know it will come up in 92, if that's okay.
And then our young people on this side will be talking in the workshop on that issue.
>> All right, thank you. I have two more points. I think there was the issue of challenges in terms of access now. From where I'm coming from I think it's a case of people not knowing what they do not know. The access is quite worry. Some people who use it are now experimenting with the Wi‑Fis and everything. It doesn't make sense for our service providers to move from to other use. The same young people are benefiting. So we need to move to the under served areas where other young people can also benefit. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I'm going to move on, if that's okay. Because we are incredibly short of time. We still have quite a few mentions and there are quite a few hands up. Yes, can I come to you, please? Sorry.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, my name is Lewis Fry from London. I'm 21. Alex, you mentioned earlier about how you got the technology at your fingertips. Isn't that a fairly unsafe for young people in a sense of having all the information to them at their fingertips almost unsupervised? So the fact that young people has all of this technology is great, don't get me wrong, but don't you think there is a case that we have to be more responsible in how much information we allow young people to have?
>> ALEX EVERETT: I think education in regards to best practice here is key, because we don't want to start banning people. We don't want to actually put aggressive contract controls on. That prohibits the open nature of the Internet. We should be focusing on education from a young age to give people an idea of how to behave online and to remind them that online space is just the offline space in a different kind of way. And the behavior should translate directly across. And yes, definitely, many young people don't follow this kind of method and that's why there are so many problems through the use of their own technology and on mobile phones are distinctly unsupervised.
So the more we can passively educate in real life, the more the better.
>> MODERATOR: Yes, Nicola.
>> NICOLA DOUGLAS: Yes, if I could also give an answer. What Alex said is education, and education for young people, but being more discerning on what they are reading in the Internet. As we mention in the workshop tomorrow, I believe one of the myths is that we are attempting ‑‑ the group attempting to bust tomorrow, and believing everything that they read on the Internet or something along those lines.
But anyhow, I think that, you know, it's about education to understanding what you are reading, and not necessarily constricting the amount of information that ‑‑ that young people are able to receive, because that's not helpful in any way at all. I think being able to look at what you are reading and tell if it's a viable source or not is of far much more useful tool to have, rather than restricting what we are given.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Any ‑‑ any comments from this side of our youth panel? Are we good?
Okay. I would like to pass over now, and to Dr. Kambugu who is head of a infection care and treatment center at Makerere, and they are going to talk about the challenges the youth face in accessing appropriate educational programs.
>> DR. ANDREW KAMBUGU: Good morning to you all. As you heard I'm a physician based in Uganda, and I guess the prospective I bring to this meeting is the context in which youth in Africa operate ‑‑ have a bearing on how they can access information technology.
I direct a clinic that has been taking care of young adults, aged 16 to 24, simply because they have needs that were not being met under the traditional health systems and so it was a clinic of ‑‑ it was the first clinic of its kind in Africa, if I can say that. And over the last three years, I believe the lessons we have learned dealing and caring for these population that is vulnerable in many ways, which can be applied to the youth in general in Africa and other resource settings and part of these needs have been responding to how they can harness information technology to make their lives better.
And so in partnership with KiBO Foundation, we supported a number of trainings, which we'll ‑‑ which I'm happy to share in this forum. And perhaps before I go into the details, I think the thrust of what I want to share is that what we have seen in this young adults paradoxically can encourage other youth who are not as vulnerable to really harness the Internet and other information technologies.
So briefly, what have we observed with these young people? These are young people who are living with HIV and initially when they enrolled into the program, first of all, they were not in good health. And so the first few months and years was really focused on making sure that they are well, but once we achieved that, it ‑‑ it clearly matched that they had other needs that could not be met under the traditional health systems, issues of poverty, unemployment, education, sexual and gender violence and other reproductive health needs.
As an academic training institution, we really struggled what our response to this would be. I think what we did is we have utilized the funding opportunities available around HIV programming to respond to these needs and briefly what we did is that within the clinic setting, we set up a resource center that includes laptops, that the young people could utilize, and use for emailing, web processing and other ways of improving their lifestyle. But we quickly realized that providing the hardware is only part of the solution because the young people did not have the requisite skills to be able to access these technologies and that's why we ‑‑ we looked around within the region and came up across the profile of the KiBO Foundation.
And what affected us, the KiBO Foundation approach is that the ICT training was not being offered in isolation, but they were looking at empowerment, self‑esteem and also community to the ‑‑ service to the community. And so we signed up a partnership with KiBO over a year ago and we are trained ‑‑ we have had 75 young adults out of the 800 that are attending the clinic to uptake training in ICT so that they have a better chance in the employment markets and also in terms of empowering these youths to negotiate within their communities. One of the contextual things is that 65% of these youth ‑‑ (Inaudible). We have seen a max change in levels of confidence, not just in life, but also in using computers. To the extent that we have been able to absorb some of the youths in part of our care processes, both as volunteer staff, but also as full‑time staff, who have jobs and also through the KiBO partnership to have placements of some of these youths in some of these published workplaces within Uganda.
It is really early days yet. It's just an experience, but I think the thrust of what I have seen, having observed these vulnerable youth walk into our clinic doors without any hope is that these youth actually would be a challenge to the general youth out there by demonstrating that they have made it and they can make it. So thank you. That's what I wanted to share.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. And you said that providing hardware is only part of the solution, and that's something that our youth and team agree with. They have come here with their battle statements this year and you can pick up some of their postcards where they talk about what they are championing. They have come up with ideas about how they can encourage and inspire other young users to come online and use it safely so picking up, Lewis, what you were saying about education.
Dan, and Matthew and Connor, what is it that you wanted to do in your school and you can comment? You can talk from there or come up here if you prefer.
>> Hello, everybody. So our team is working in schools to promote and encourage and educate our young peers about the Internet. We intend to show you here today a proven model for increasing accessibility within a school environment. We want to address the issue of children finding the Internet a daunting and frustrating place. We have found that many children, especially those just starting secondary school, aged about 11, can find the Internet a daunting place to be and become frustrated and annoyed with it. So that's why we want to help.
>> They would create an Internet school council. Our school has this but it's select. We think it should expand to include anybody. At our school, we know many people who would be very interested in joining. Having a large ICT council would help to generate new ideas for the school and the Internet and teaching. For instance, suggesting iPads.
Hopefully it would, an ongoing process with the support of the school and the teacher support too.
>> All communities will organize and present school assemblies to address students in grades, 7, 8, and 9 this would have an impact on the students. For example, at one point in the assembly, we could ask the units to raise their hands whoever is using Facebook as a social networking site and because of the age that they are between 11 and 14, the people that put their hands up below the age of 13, we can tell them that they should not be using Facebook at this time. So we start the assembly with an impact to get them to listen and realize that there are these dangers and they can be avoided easily.
The rest of the assembly is how they can be using the Internet responsible and safely.
>> To help aid these children who find themselves confused and frustrated with the Internet, we are planning to run workshops at lunchtimes and for ‑‑ within the school. These would be looking at the social site, for example, Facebook, and other social networking sites and the working site for things like research, knowledge, and education to further their understanding.
>> The committee that will be set up will organize and publish a survey about the uses and usage and knowledge of the Internet through the school email, or via paper if the school email is not set up. The surveys will help us know what the young children know so we can group their problems and address them, and most of them, for example. For example, if most of them use the Internet for more than four hours a day we could encourage them to scale down their usage and give them tips on how to refine their searches and get the most out of the limited time they have in a school day.
>> We would use these committees to produce posters and leaflets of information. These would be handed out to the attendees to these workshops and meeting. We would encourage them to take them home, transfer their knowledge to other generations. By doing this we are supporting Race Online 2012 and further spreading knowledge of the Internet.
>> Also especially in our small communities in Devon, me and Connor, we could help our elderly neighbors, and volunteer at the local old people's home and sometimes take a piece of technology to show them. Perhaps if a few of the ladies became hooked, we could order a computer.
So in conclusion, we believe that the Internet is there to be shared and that in England, especially, one needs to have access to the Internet in order to feel connected to society. Those without connection will find themselves excluded. So we encourage everyone to come online and raise awareness of how to use the Internet safely and to get the most out of it.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. And Alex, Nicola, and Jack and Becca, can I hear from you now, please.
>> I had there. In the past, there have been many initiatives to try to teach young people about safety online. The education has been set in motion, but was unsuccessful. The question is what can we do to make them successful? Everything has a flip side. We believe that shocking young people into safety online is not the way forward. Furthermore, and adult speaker can often across as patronizing to the younger generation. It's not about motivating them to be online, but motivating the safety online, and how ‑‑ and how to guarantee the positive outlook the Internet can give.
>> I think we are talking to 11 to 13‑year‑olds who are enthusiastic. If we targeting them at each, we will get to them before they put unprotected materials out on the Internet and the children are spreading what they are learning with their friends and family. But we also think we could target some older years say 15 and 16‑year‑olds who have a more mature response to it and may be able to carry out the message to the younger years. Also, older children will be willing to do this as they will look at it on CDs and be good to their future as well. So I think if we target both of these groups they can even each other quite a lot.
>> So the way in which to do this is really important, because a lot of money has been put in over many years of companies trying to get messages out. So, I mean, let me just ask you guys, how many of you actually come to an evening, say, to learn about Internet safety. Probably very little, because they feel they feel they need it. We need to do it without shoving it down people's throats. We are considering hijacking other events which would allow us to get the message across in a nonintrusive way.
So for example, career fairs and all of that sort of thing and there we can get the message being over the top of it and really putting people off I suppose. One message that was used Childnet spoke to my year group at school, and they told us they have been given a list of Facebook profiles most likely to be low security and then how they found embarrassing picture. You can imagine the collective gasps around the room. It's not such a scare tactic. It's more just a welcome to the real world tactic and that's what really made the difference in bringing people's awareness to light.
>> So the kind of content that we would be having in these sessions as has been said before, we really don't want to use scare tactics too readily. The thing that Alex is talking about is the thing that we feel has an impact but what we want to do is encourage them and use the Internet safely but not scare them away. That's not conducive to diverse Internet at all. The other important thing is that we are not lecturing people. We don't want to preach to them about how to do it because when people are preached to ‑‑ we find that they don't want to listen to what they are saying and that ‑‑ that they feel that they know everything already, and the things that we are trying to tell them about internet safety, Facebook privacy settings are important things that not a lot of people actually know fully about.
And, you know, one of the ways in which we can encourage our own age group is to exhibit sort of privacy settings ourselves, by showing best practice and sort of being good digital citizens, and using digital technologies safely and hopefully our example will set an example to our friend groups by doing that we can exhibit sort of the best way to be safe online and encourage people to enjoy it, but yet again also to be safe.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you ever so much, guys. We heard a little bit about how we can begin to start challenging some of these obstacles. This is the deputy director general and youth program director of the Imbuto Foundation and I would like to invite Nina to tell us what can be done to overcome access.
>> NINA SHALITA: Good morning, my name is Nina Shalita, the deputy director. I'm also the youth program director. The Imbuto Foundation is founded by the first lady of our country.
Should I go ahead?
>> MODERATOR: Can we switch over to the slide program, please?
>> NINA SHALITA: I would like to first of all share with the youth, just a message that we in Rwanda believe, consider a country where all citizens young and hold are enforced and engaged in major issues. A police where young people and adults are at the table, debating, crafting solutions and jointly deciding on how resources are allocated.
In Imbuto Foundation is in Rwanda. It means a seed and what the foundation does, we would like and we empower the youth in Rwanda. What we would like to do is make sure that the programs that we have in Rwanda with the youth are given to the youth, a seed well planted, watered, nurtured and it successfully grows in a healthy plant, one that reaches high and stands tall.
An overview of Rwanda, we have a population of 10 million. 68% of the population are youth, under 25 years old, and youth aged between 14 and 35 are 40.2%. So you can clearly see that the majority of the population are youth and the country is doing as much as possible to make sure that we empower the youth for the future. The role of youth in the development of Rwanda. We have youth council structures that play a critical role in enhancing leadership and government, local government structures. We also have a youth unity and reconciliation clubs that play a big role in building culture of peace and reconciliation. As you know, this is something that is extremely important since the 1994 genocide.
The youth civic engagement, which the youth go through, it's a three weeks program, that the youth go through, which promotes social transformation through acquisition of positive values, culture, perceptions and practices in the country. The integration of ICT and the development which we also think is extremely important for the role of the youth to acquire, preserve, use and disseminate information to the rest of the community.
Once a month, we have what we call the Uganda, which is a community work, which all youth and the rest of the country, Rwandas. We clean homes, we clean the area and the youth are very much involved in building homes for the poor in the community, renovating classrooms and they use whatever resources they have to mobilize and strengthen the community.
We also have an engagement in economic development initiatives through entrepreneurship, capacity building to other youth, savings mobilization to increase access to finance.
Imbuto, our vision is a nation of empowered and dignified Rwandans. We support of education of a healthy and prosperous society. We make sure we align all of our programs with the national priorities to fulfill our mission through advocacy, community outreach, mentorship, fostering partnership and unleashing the young talent.
Rwanda's vision is to move from the ago are I cultural‑based ‑‑ agricultural‑based economy to a knowledge‑based economy and the foundation contributes to this through four objectives. We strengthen the value systems and leadership capacities of the youth. We empower youth by enhancing communication skills and public speaking. We encourage innovative solutions and entrepreneurship development amongst the youth, and we recognize young Rwanda achievers in Rwanda and it's done through public speaker, mentorship, and health.
Under our education, we have a number of programs. We have a scholarship program, which services the under privileged children through secondary school. We also have a promotion of girls education where the First Lady awarded best performing girls annually. We have served or helped over 1,000 students.
The next picture just shows the First Lady who just awarded a girl and this was recently done. We also have the leadership program and the mentorship program, which we call the Rwanda speaks project and this, again, it enhances skills in public speaking, leadership and mentorship through different initiatives. We have the Toast masters club, a television show that runs every month and we have the work when we work with secondary school students. Really these programs really empower the youth in public speaking and communicating skills. We feel it's a great need where the children are educated and unable to express themselves and therefore cannot use the Internet. This is something we make sure we do.
We also have youth forums and through these youth forums, it just helps us to encourage members and youth between lead ‑‑ to create a dialogue between the youth and the leaders and so far we have had 13 forums targeting young professionals, university students, genocide survivors, secondary students. I think I'm running late so we can move on.
The next slide. The following slide. Yes. We can go to the next. Okay. The next is I just wanted to share with you is a program that we have called celebrating young Rwandan achievers where every two years the President and the First Lady recognize young Rwandans. It's selected through a public voting system and also through the Internet, through the web site. So far, we've had 22 young Rwandan achievers and we recently awarded a few last month. Like I said, we have speakers like His Excellency, and the First Lady. We have senior members of the government and we have international figures such as an economist.
The themes that we have, things that affect the youth and also at the national agenda, such as ingredients of success, ambassadors of change starts with you, spreading seeds of professionalism, and entrepreneurship in Rwanda.
We have health initiatives where the youth are involved in using peer education approach to teach adolescent reproductive health using the youth. We also have HIV/AIDS. We combat HIV/AIDS also using the youth and we also use the sports as a means to involve youth in fighting malaria.
Our success is the involvement of top leadership in the country, whether His Excellency, the President and the First Lady have very much been involved in our programs. We set up business companies and acquisitions of entrepreneurship knowledge by youth, inspiration of youth by youth, by the past awardees acting as role models. We also have a few challenges whereby we are still trying to find a way of evaluating the impact of youth projects, and changing their mind‑sets, behavioral change, which we continue to face even now.
Also creating self‑sustainable youth programs continues to remain a challenge. But like we all know, the young people are social actors of change, and as the saying goes, youth are not the leaders of tomorrow, but the partners of today. These are just a few pictures of the youth in Rwanda that are under our program. The first picture shows a youth going through the mentorship program and to the right we have youth in a debate show that's been televised. And then at the bottom, we have a university that we set up a Toast Masters Club.
The following picture has just ‑‑ just shows a number of programs that we have, and at the bottom, we have celebrating young Rwandan achievers. We have the First Lady awarding a young youth as she performed one of the best performance in Rwanda.
In my country we say (Speaking native language) thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, and I'm sorry to have to hurry speakers along now, but we are drawing very rapidly to the end ever our session. I would like to pass over very briefly to Patricia who will tell us about what the KiBO Foundation are doing and then we'll move very swiftly into our conclusions.
>> PATRICIA AYO OTOA: Thank you, Lucinda. I will speak briefly on what the KiBO Foundation is doing in the corporate perspective. I work with the corporate relations department of the KiBO Foundation. Number one, we are trying to develop activities to encourage the youth to use the Internet.
For example, online discussion forums, where they give us a status update of what they are currently doing. We also ‑‑ we are also trying to encourage the youth as much as we can to research and connect with people all over the world for the opportunities they have out there. We have a digital newsletter. We have a few hard copies here. So if you would like a digital copy, you can send an email. I will send you a link where you are able to view our newsletters.
We are also trying to create online job opportunities through partnering with local entities in Uganda. For example, Store Wide Enterprises. They will be required to use the Internet for their research. Besides that, what we think we can do in the future is sort of provide online applications and educational games for the youth. And also provide opportunities for them to be online in terms of research, and the jobs they are looking for in the future. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Well we've had some fantastically wide ranging conversations today. I think the thing that has stood out for me is the fact that as Allen Michael who is one of the MPs at the art of the IGF said, it's all about human behavior, and I think that is key to what we are talking, about particularly in encouraging people to come online. We all have a role to play.
As we conclude, I'm going to ask Camilla for any final comments from the Danish young people. I'm going to quickly come to Hannah to see if there's anything from our remote participants.
>> Hannah: Hi, we are still joined by remote participants in Pakistan and Papua New Guinea, but no comments so far.
>> MODERATOR: Hopefully they enjoyed listening to our panel. Do any of you have any closing comments you would like to make? Do any of you have any challenges you would like to make, whether it's industry, government, or just individuals? Yeah, Alannah?
>> ALANNAH TRAVERS: Okay, well, I think and I believe that the government should perhaps fund it, if you can't afford the Internet because as we have discussed, they are missing out on so much, whether it's just catching up on favorite television. And so, I think perhaps the government should buy some cheap computers, for instance, like the Microsoft 99 computer, families and benefits so their children can get a job study and perhaps benefits them. As we discussed, the Internet can be a fantastic tool.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Nicola.
>> NICOLA DOUGLAS: I would just like to say to anyone out there who is industry related. You all have corporate social responsibility, I think you call it, to help people who necessarily don't have the opportunity to get on to the Internet, or not able to fund themselves getting on to the Internet. I think in order to achieve a world that truly ‑‑ an Internet that truly reflects our world today, we need to get as many people on to the Internet possible, as whatever means available. I think it is something that governments and industries should always be considering when they are budgeting and things that Internet now is ‑‑ it's our future. It's now, and it's a very, very big priority.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I can see two more comments. Before I come to those, Freida, are there any closing comments from the KiBO Foundation that anyone would like to make?
>> FREIDA: Well, to the team are there any closing comments? I did realize that there was a little presentation that he was supposed to make.
>> MODERATOR: Sorry, I can't hear very well.
>> FREIDA: For now, unless any of the team wants to make some closing remarks from the KiBO Foundation, doctor?
>> Thank you very much. I think having gone through the KiBO program, I will be able to issue a lot of programs, especially in advising people on financial needs and the use of the Internet so that they can be able to get more finance ‑‑ more about financial investment. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Camilla, any closing thoughts from the Danish young people?
>> CAMILLA: Yes, I just wanted to ‑‑ I think it was Matthew said it. The skill one gets gives you the upper hand. I think that's true for everyone in different ways.
(No audio).
Youth participation on online. It's an effective way to do it, and especially the IGF issues because to have the ability to lift up the safety agenda, to a matter that shows the larger picture. So it's not only online safety, but actually the future ‑‑ (Inaudible).
>> I believe the primary role of government is to protect the country, and to make its citizens feel safe through policy and regulation. Also, in reply to Nicola, I think it's the government's role to ensure that the citizens can access the Internet, e.g., I think subsidizing the Internet. We can all aspire, we can come here to the IGF and we can have these discussions and then we can go away and we can go to the governments and the industries and say we want to increase accessibility. We want to ‑‑ we want to make sure everyone is online because the Internet is such an empowering tool. We all agree the internet is doing good.
So I will go as far to say the Internet is a basic human right and we should aspire to make that happen.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Okay. We will move down this side. We will have Jack, Alex, and then Becca.
>> JACK PASSMORE: Bark on to Matt's point, I think it's the role of the governments to spread the fund of the access of the Internet that have none. It's revolutionized the world and it's becoming much bigger and it is so ‑‑ it's such a great view point for people to have. And the taxpayers shouldn't be paying for something they already have, but it's the role of the industry as well to boost their signals to reach those hard‑of‑reach places. I think the governments and the industries should be working together in order to spread the Internet to harder areas to reach.
>> ALEX EVERETT: Often, I think there's a risk that we in the Western society take the Internet. And then hearing about the difficulties that KiBO and others face, it makes me feel like a hypocrite talking about what I do already online. I think we should be helping the whole world get online. I think there should be no economic or intellectual reason why anyone is not online. If they don't want to be online, then, of course that should be their right. There should nobody reason why they cannot get online should they wish.
>> BECCA CAWTHORNE: Yeah, just going off what Alex said, I think that also motivation is quite a key thing as well as cost, and if there's more education funded and settings were made simple for people to not have to share the information they don't want to share. I think it would be easier for them to do if they have the funding to do it. That's about it.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Well, that leads very nicely into a little plug for this afternoon's workshop that our young people will be taking part in, workshop 417, can digital citizenship scale effectively. We will be having a panel of young people speaking there.
I would encourage you all to go to that an come along to workshop 92 tomorrow afternoon where we are going to be myth busting, some of the myths that people hold about young people. I would like to thank the KiBO Foundation and our other partners. It's been very difficult to try to accommodate all of our ideas into one and a half hours but we both have booths in the IGF village. I would encourage you to visit those and to come and talk to our young people. They are fantastic and they have a massive amount of ideas that they want to share. So do ‑‑ do catch them on your way out. Pick up one ever their postcards and listen to what they have to say. Thank you very much for coming.
(Applause)
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