FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED
MULTI-STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
05 SEPTEMBER 2014
09:00
YOUTH COALITION ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE
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This is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. 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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>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Great to have you here. My name is Ephraim Percy from Kenya. And it's a great morning that you are all here. I would love if we start by introducing ourselves from my left. And then -- thank you.
>> YANNIS LI: Hi, this is Yannis with the NetMission team.
>> DAVID USSO: This is David Usso with the NetMission team from Hong Kong.
>> BONIFASIUS PUDJIANTO: Good morning. My name is Bonifasius from AfriNIC.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Yes, so welcome to the Youth Coalition on Internet Governance session. As you can see most of us here are youth and that's awesome.
So I know most of you if you're not familiar with what is Youth Coalition on Internet Governance, I'll be happy to introduce that, then we would have reflections from our sessions, yesterday's session on youth involvement in Internet Governance. Yannis will give us those reflections. And what the youth said. Because she's aware. And David and anybody else who was here we are welcome to hear what you said yesterday and that would fit in today.
Because the main mission here today is to plan for the next three years the Youth Coalition on Internet Governance is a Dynamic Coalition in the United Nations Internet Governance Forum whereby it's a space for youth to interact. The Youth Coalition is a session during every IGF. It's not a workshop so we just have to request to have avenues to interact.
So this Coalition started way back around approximately five years ago. And it was active. By then the people who were there at the time, the youth then are no longer youth. So new people need to come up and rejuvenate it and make it more vibrant. And I think it's us, all of us here in this room and a few people participating remotely. You are very much welcome. So basically explain what the Youth Coalition is basically. It's a space for young people in the IGF to interact and share ideas and talk about our space in this ecosystem. We are a minority as you can see in the Internet governance processes not many young people participate and we want to change that so we want to push for more youth inclusion in the Internet governance discussions and the policy making principles. And yes basically that's our mission for today.
And we want to attract new young people from diverse continents and diverse backgrounds. We have people from Asia here, we have people from Africa, people from Europe. And we would also like to add people from Latin America and North America. And yes we make youth more vibrant in the Internet governance discussions. Thank you. I would love to hear from Yannis and then David about reflections from youth and their experiences in Asia. And the NetMission programme. And then I would love from here we will hear from Bonifasius about the award programme which brought so many young people here and he has been in the ICANN fellowship and how young people can participate. And then we'll move forward. Thank you.
>> YANNIS LI: This is Yannis speaking. So actually the Ambassador programme was initiated in 2009. It has been almost four, five years, and we constantly actually we were supposed by DotAsia organisations. And we are constantly trying to bring young people to this Internet Governance Forum and discussions.
So every year we send ambassadors and this year we have people down there from that mission and then actually two years ago the NetMission ambassadors say they think it's important to have this Internet governance preparations or discussions or raise the awareness to even younger generations because nowadays, the young people, they use Internet. They have access to the Internet at a very early age. So they feel that they need to be prepared to understand what is Internet governance and also since they are one of the major users that's why they should also have a voice there so they initiated another net wide programme for high school students I won't share that in detail maybe later on we can invite the ambassadors to speak about it but perhaps maybe I can share a little bit a about what we have discussed.
The workshop that we organised is about the youth involvement in Internet governance yesterday that we hosted. The ideas of this workshop actually because we feel that there are already a lot of programmes like NetMission or others. And also now they are a child -- now bringing other young people to the IGF although we didn't see them here right now. So we feel like actually there's already many NGOs around us doing a lot of capacity building programmes already but then we feel there still seems to be some missing channel or platform that really is engaging for the to participate.
Like how they can be heard. Even they have acquired some of the -- even when they want to participate, they seem to not be aware of how they can do it.
So yesterday we hosted this workshop and we brought together some of the policymakers from -- we had a panel from Bangladesh, the Government Ministry of ICT and also we had the European Parliament member from Germany who is actually a young -- became a Parliament member at a very young age and we also invited a MAG member of IGF and also the Vice President of the public responsibility programme from ICANN from these different Internet governance related institutions, representatives, to come and to discuss with our Youth Panel on how they can bridge this gap so we can really make sure the young people can have a seat or to really have some place to ensure their comments are being heard or considered. And that's -- maybe David can then share more about the sessions, what was the outcome.
>> DAVID USSO: Hi and for the outcome just thinking about that, the audience of the workshop, they mainly agree that the youth participation in IG discussion is very important to embrace the multistakeholderism of the IG discussion.
Just an observation that as we see in the IGF, maybe it's just like around -- youth is only 2 to 5 percentage of youth is engaged in such kind of discussion. We are just thinking about how we can engage more people to enjoying those discussions and sharing their opinions from the youth points of view.
Just thinking of different strategies in terms of to engage the people to the Internet governance discussion. One of them we have just discussed about the capacity building things. It would be very important to let youth know about how important the Internet use is related to them. We can share opinions and experience that we have experience in IGF or even by sharing the models in different countries. And we can generalize all of those kinds of good examples and bring it back to our locals in doing the engagement in the very first step. But other than that, how to bridge the gap between we, the youth, and the policymakers.
We got a very good suggestion in the workshop that maybe in the IGF there we have gotten some kind of Multistakeholder Advisory Group, youth can definitely enjoy this kind of work to foster our opinions.
In order to help the IGF to be more engagable to youth.
It would be very good that youth from our points of view can share how we can think, how we can engage more peers to join this kind of discussion. And youth forums should not be negated.
And the other thing we have agreed is although the youth voice is very important it would be nice to have balance and views on different stakeholders. We really like having the different kind of dialogue with the policymakers, the Private Sectors, and also business people in order to have a very good interaction and embracing the multistakeholder engagement in both IG views and how to share our ideas in such areas. Thank you.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Before Bonifasius Pudjianto speaks, we want to know if this is getting a livestreaming session. We are getting messages that people want to attend remotely but they are having a problem getting on to the livestream. So if you could check on that I would appreciate it.
>> BONIFASIUS PUDJIANTO: Thank you. As I said, I'm an AfriNIC award winner. For the benefit of everyone, AfriNIC is the Internet Registry for Africa. This programme is to support innovations by youth in the field of Internet, research and education.
As a beneficiary, basically my initiative was about providing open educational resources for primary school kids. This is Kenya's Government dedication to provide one laptop per child in primary schools so we feel that there's the need to provide content for the laptops. Because without content on the laptops, laptop is just a toy.
So we feel that we could work on producing high quality Creative Commons, resources, put them in digital format or online or PDF format or wiki format and just to promote deeper learning and enhance capacity building in education and the integration of ICT into the education system in Kenya.
As a fellow from ICANN from Singapore, for those of you who may not already know about the ICANN fellowship, it basically aims to strengthen the youth participation in an Internet governance ecosystem.
Currently the youth make up more than half of the world population. However their voices are rarely heard when it comes to Internet governance issues. So as a way, we need to find a model that can foster interest among the youth. Because first of all, most youth are not aware of Internet governance.
So if we could reach out to them. Because I believe there's a gap as far as information, access to information on Internet governance is concerned. So we need to come up with strategies to reach out to the youth to enlighten them about Internet governance just to have them foster interest in the Internet governance matters. That would be the first step towards building capacities and helping education of the next generation of leadership. Thank you.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Thank you, Bonifasius. So you've heard about different experiences currently about the youth in this space.
So we want to get more into the Youth Coalition.
So how does the Youth Coalition support the ongoing -- or how do we get to be supported by the ongoing initiatives.
So I would love to hear from David, who will give us a little bit of a background on the Youth Coalition on Internet Governance. And yes just a little bit. Thank you.
>> DAVID USSO: To start with I would like to maybe invite the floor to briefly introduce yourself and then we can know more about your background and we can have a fruitful discussion on how we can engage different parties to make the Youth Coalition to move forward and how to re-energize the youth participation in a sense.
Because for the workshop yesterday we got a very good mission on how we can make the true participation of youth in IG area. And how do we do so? We need your contribution. For the very first step we would like you guys to join the YCIG we would like to see how we can work together to make participation of youth in IGF and in IGF and also the other areas of Internet governance. So we have the floor and the mic on stand by to pass the mic on the floor for everyone to feel free to introduce themself.
>> WILSON LAM: Hello. Can you hear me? Okay. So hello my name is Wilson. I come from NetMission ambassadors from Hong Kong. And I'm here for the IGF mainly because for the youth sections and also child Internet safety.
>> AUDIENCE: This is Ena from NetY Ambassadors from Hong Kong. And so we come here because we are the winners for NSA writing competition. So basically we write on issues about Internet governance. And our topic was on Internet rumors.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. My name is Agnes. I'm also one of the NetY Ambassadors from Hong Kong. Actually we three are 12th graders. So yeah.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm Michael from Hong Kong. I'm a teammate with them. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm Chris from Hong Kong. I'm a youth social worker mainly focused on the fair amendment.
>> ANNE COLLIER: Hello. I'm Anne Collier. I'm not a youth very obviously I'm with connectsafely.org so I've been involved in youth protection or child protection track here a lot. And I was late to the coalition session yesterday. I apologize. I had right before organised a workshop about digital citizenship featuring youth. No panel. Just adults facilitating a conversation with young people. And I'm also very interested in increasing not just youth voice but youth participation in IG. And would love to talk with you a little bit more later on about Private Sector involvement. We have learned a little bit in the past year. And I could tell you some of the challenges at least in the United States. But I'll let everybody finish introducing themselves first.
>> JOE GATTUSO: Just in time. Hi, my name is Joe Gattuso with the U.S. Department of Commerce. I am here actually sponsoring some other attendees but I know Anne and I worked in this field with the Department of Commerce doing Child Online Protection work. So it's still an issue very near and dear to me.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi my name is Mae. I'm from Thailand from Ministry of ICT. I've come here to listen for your ideas.
>> ELI LOEB: Hello, my name is Eli. I'm from the U.S. And I'm just here to kind of participate.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm Dhijl and I'm from the Netherlands, Amsterdam. And in there I run a business, a grocery delivery business which has not a lot to do with Internet governance but then I also work as a consultant for some big companies helping them with their online issues and online strategy. So that's why I'm interested in Internet governance. So that's why I'm here.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. I'm Ben I'm with the IGF delegation also from the Netherlands. And also to speak further about your Private Sector question. In the Netherlands it's arranged like this. We are sent to the IGF by ECP, and that's a Government organisation -- or actually a stand-alone organisation that's funded 50% by Government and 50% by Private Sector. Well, that's how it works in the Netherlands. And it works quite well I think.
>> PIM THIJR: Hi. My name is Pim Thijr, also from the Netherlands and also with the IGF youth delegation. And also I want to next year get more youth here. So that's the reason I'm here.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Yeah, thank you. I think the setting of this room is just like a panel and we have the floor but we are not like the other panel discussions that we just say our things. We would like the floor to be joining us for discussion. Because it's mainly -- as the YCIG structure we have a mission on sharing how we think of IG and how to engage more youth people in a sense by cooperatively joining those kinds of ideas from different people we can think about how we can engage perfectly mesh the youth in these kinds of settings.
>> AUDIENCE: Yeah, because maybe as a starter, I'm interested in like elaborating a little bit how it works in the Netherlands so we have with the IGF and as youngsters we are there and we are with a group of 20 youngsters who want to go here and they selected 2. But maybe it's nice to tell from the different countries how it worked for you. How you came here. And maybe you can learn something from that.
Yeah, so you asked how we got selected from the Netherlands.
Well, it actually was like there's an NL IGF and 300 attendees and so not only youngsters but everybody goes there for preparation for this meeting. And they asked someone who has a big youth network who preselected like 20, 25 youngsters and they came to the NL IGF and participated in sessions and there were a jury of four or five people who went to these and who would do well in sessions and who liked to talk and participate and that's how it worked so my question stands, how did it work in like the U.S.?
>> AUDIENCE: We aren't nearly as uniformed and organised. We do have a U.S. IGF. I haven't really participated in recent years. It's definitely all been adults. I actually was in one session a few years ago that involved youth but I kind of gave up on it. It was in Washington and, you know, not particularly relevant to anything I was interested in in the IGF such as child protection and you know youth participation and citizenship and all of that.
So the thing that's interesting in the IGF and maybe Joe, I don't know if Joe has any input from the U.S. Government, the U.S. Government is vast. And multistakeholder in the U.S. means that IG participation is very grassroots. It's from the people.
And which means that it's not very central or organised. And at least not where youth participation is concerned.
And as Yannis knows, we tried to -- we have never of had youth participation from the U.S. and it's really because of budget reasons, money.
So I co-direct a small NGO in Silicon Valley in California. And we are funded by large companies like Facebook and Google and a large security company that's been participating this week, Trend Micro. And they support our organisation and our work. But they don't -- they are very Washington facing. They have different budgets. They are huge, too. These companies.
So they kind of have -- they have international work. So for example, Facebook and Twitter have -- all of their international work is based in India. I think in Bangalore or Hyderabad and Dublin in Europe.
I don't know if they have big offices in other countries. They have just developed for example Facebook has been in Australia for a while. Twitter just started a new position in Australia. Just for example.
So it's very dispersed. And what these companies, it's so hard to explain all of this and you can't generalize because each company is quite unique in the way it approaches policy and child protection, which seems to be where youth participation is placed in the framework, in the policy parts of these companies.
So the reason why it's difficult to get funding to bring youth from the United States to IGF is because the funds that are dedicated to our work are about lobbying on Capitol Hill about educating lawmakers and policymakers in the United States, which is a very high priority for them because they don't want a lot of regulation. Their international budgets don't help us, they don't fund our work.
So when we approached Microsoft because Microsoft has a big presence at IGF. We thought, oh, Microsoft will help us get some U.S. youth to the ICANN meeting in Beijing. Yannis when was that about two years ago? So we thought that's perfect Microsoft will really like to fund that because they have participated in our work in IGF in recent years.
But they -- either their budget was dedicated to other things by then or they didn't feel comfortable about an international project at that time. That wasn't preplanned so that funding didn't happen. And we'll continue to try to work with U.S. companies to bring U.S. youth to IGF. We feel that's a very important project. But we're not sure that that is the best approach to take. We're trying to talk with people in the U.S. State Department and other entities in the U.S. Government to see if there's interest in developing a fellowship or something like that. But it's all sort of big and complex and we have to learn the various layers of policy and structure involved. So there are challenges and I would be very interested in hearing how people in other countries get funding and generate interest and that's why I was asking about Dutch youth.
So thanks very much for listening to all of this.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Thank you. After he's done I would love to hear from people in the back who haven't said hi to us. Just to introduce themselves. And then we continue.
>> JAROSLAW PONDER: It's on? Yes. Good morning, my name is Jaroslaw Ponder. I'm the strategy advisor at the ITU as well as the Director for the Europe region in the International Telecommunication Union. I don't know if you would allow me to sort of in this introduction to say a few words. So from our perspective as the ITU secretariate and the top management the voice of the young people is key. During the meetings of our memberships this is the new way to observe where the Member States as well as the Sector Members of Private Sector is advocating strongly on creating interfaces for the young people to be part of the decision making processes. This is the reason why the beyond summit last year has taken place with the leadership of Costa Rica but very strongly supported by the management and the membership and this paved the way towards the next step of creating the internships of voicing the proposals and to be interjected and propose at the Plenipotentiary Conference which is the highest body of the ITU in order to express what is the concern of the young people.
And this makes us really proud. Because through the crowd sourcing platform, just now with the strong support of different countries, including Costa Rica, we are able to for the first time in the history to produce the document, which will be discussed and debated at the formal conference.
So therefore, I think the more we are doing in this direction, the better it will be reflected not only in the ITU, which is the key UN agency for the ICTs, but also in other sister agencies because we are creating the mechanisms which can be further developed and duplicated.
On the other hand, also it's not only about the contributing to the decision making processes but also in making sure that the level of the countries there's a good understanding of the challenge of the involvement of the young people in the decision making processes. And addressing the key challenges, including the gender balance and empowering the young girls and women to be involved more in the ICT sector. And this is the reason why we are trying to motivate all of those who can make the change at the national level to create the role models and to make sure that much more of the young women, for example, are interested in if being part of the ICT debate. In addition, we have this different regional initiative and this is a good sign. Because for the first time on the agenda of the Development Conference, the challenges of the of young people like employment and entrepreneurship came on the agenda and were reflected in the framework of the initiatives which were focused on the actions on the real projects and generation of a real change.
So from this point of view, I believe that there's a lot what could be done. Of course the participation is always very challenging. And it's not only a lot of effort on the side of the organisers of kind of the events but also this is something that we are always underlining that the young people have also lots of different opportunities to see the programme well in advance of how to get the funding. Because the organisations are interested in engaging.
So sometimes it's very pragmatic approach, the recommendation letter it's enough in order to get the funding at the national level.
The last point in the message what I wanted to say is the ITU is the multistakeholder organisation. With the strong partnership and collaboration with the Private Sector. And we are thankful to the Private Sector for taking the youth as also the top priority for them. Because these are the young generations which are building the capacities of the enterprises. And therefore, on the annual basis at the telecom of the ITU we have the young innovators competition where all young people are invited to post and to submit their proposals and their projects. And then those who are winning, they are invited to present at the global forum where we are dealing with the CEOs of the biggest companies of the world, of the telecom and the ICT industry.
So those who are interested in collaboration, we are encouraging you to contact us. And to exhaust maximum all offerings and this is what we are doing for the young people with the best benefit for you. Thank you very much.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: For the other newcomers if you can briefly introduce yourself.
>> JONATHAN SSEMBAJWE: My name is Jonathan Ssembajwe. I am from the Rights of Young Foundation, a youth organisation in Uganda my participation was supported by the DotKids Foundation. We implement different activities and we are promoting the rights of children and young people and among those is online safety for children with committees and policymakers to ensure that they provide the tech part in the provision of Internet safety for children and young people. Thank you so much.
>> OCTAVIA KUMALO: Hi, I'm Octavia from ISOC chapter in South Africa. And we are basically a new chapter. So we are still trying to find our feet with the whole IGF kind of agendas and issues and challenges.
We held our first regional IGF three months ago. And getting funding was a bit of a problem. And the only fund that we really had was Google. And yeah, so I'm just -- I'm here to listen and learn from others. Thank you.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Maybe for the newcomers we can share about what we are doing today. So at YCIG we are an organisation in IGF that we have different kinds of youth organisations and individuals interested in engaging youth in IG discussions to join this coalition. And for our mission it's mainly like achieving the effective and meaningful youth participation and involvement in IG by having a supporting network to be set up. And we can also co-organise different kinds of youth initiatives you can see for every year we will get an assembly here to getting all of us here to discuss about how we can go further for engaging different kinds of people. That's for this particular meeting I think we can separate into two different parts for the first part we would like to share the youth programme from different countries and different organisations what kind of good example can be taken and shared that we can go back to our own countries to improve our programmes on how we can have a more meaningful and effective youth engagement and involvement in the IG area and for the others I think this session can be like we can have a talk about how we can move forwards and also other steps for the YCIG to achieve the goals we have just mentioned.
So I think for the very first part I see a hand from NetMission and you guys maybe share more about your experience and the work you are doing. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: So this is Enoch speaking and we are high school students from Hong Kong. So we joined this competition to let us be involved and learn more about the Internet governance issue other than this competition in Hong Kong there are just forms of lectures and talks at schools arranged by NGOs or governments that are that is quite in short term. So it might be able to educate a large scale of students but the problem is it's not long-term or sustainable at all.
So I see a problem here in my country is that there's a tradeoff between the quality and the quantity of the education. Because of the limited resources. And resources have to be allocated correctly. And in the case of Hong Kong, I think it's in balance and it's on the quantity side rather than focusing on the quality of education.
So I think there are talks and lectures that may seem to be effective but the real case is we don't learn a lot from those events and that's a waste of money in my opinion of.
>> AUDIENCE: So maybe let me briefly introduce the NetY Ambassador programme because I think that this programme like as a competition is a really good starting point to engage youth involvement and Internet governance. So basically this programme requires the participants to write an essay on any topics about Internet governance. And our team wrote about Internet rumors.
So then we were chosen to be the final five and then we attend a discussion session to talk about some hot topics like real name systems.
And then we were chosen to be the champions and we are fully subsidized to be here. I think that this is good because as a competition, teenagers can learn more and more deeply and wisely. Like if we attend some tutorial sessions we are not listening. Or like I listen and then I go out and I forget.
So during this competition really I feel like I've learned a lot. Not only on Internet governance issues. But also I've widened my international horizon.
So I really think that a competition is a good starting point. Thank you.
>> ANNE COLLIER: I have a question, I have a lot of questions actually. But one of them is would it be helpful to identify and list the barriers to youth participation in IGF? And you know obviously funding is one. And another one is probably lack of awareness. IGF in everyday life in each country. I think maybe also a question I have is where is the best place to learn about how IGF works and what it's for?
I've attended -- I think this is my fourth and I'm still a little bit confused about what IGF is all about and where it's going. I think for some time people thought it would end after three years and now it seems to be continuing but I remember NetMission and DotKids wanted to take youth to Beijing to an ICANN meeting. And have IGF education part of that experience for youth. I wonder if maybe this is a question for you, Yannis, if you still believe that an ICANN meeting is a good place to bring youth and adults together to learn about this whole multistakeholder process. And if not, maybe you feel it's now the IGF itself. I would love to get your thoughts on that.
>> YANNIS LI: Thanks for the question. Well, I think actually ICANN and IGF serve sort of a different purpose these are two different fora I'm not sure if the other youth delegations know what ICANN is. So ICANN is -- so you know about it. So I don't have to talk -- okay. Maybe -- can you -- I'll explain briefly that's the organisations that coward name on the names and numbers and the Domain Name System of the Internet which is the backbone of that. So they do have this multistakeholder structure and I think what is different is at ICANN they really will make policies or decisions about how this DNS will be run and instead of I think IGF is sort of a more sharing purpose for people to come together and share their experience in their countries and then share the best practices and then to discuss about issues. While although we don't have any authority, we have -- decision making power within IGF, I still think it's available for young people to get involved.
And I think -- I will say, I believe I think IGF is sort of the first step. Because the issues here are more general. And then there's more related to the youth themselves so I think it would be a good platform for the youth for the young people to get a sense of what IG is. And that's why actually we initiated that Beijing meeting to years ago with the NetMission ambassadors we think also it will be time for us to really make some influence in addition to the IGF fora and then we can really make the youth participate in the ICANN policy discussions, as well. So I think IGF is still relevant for sure.
So actually I think you raise a very good suggestion that probably we can try to identify what are the areas for the youth participation here on the IG and I think it's important that as the group here, the Youth Coalition, how we can come into play to facilitate or sustain these youth participation because every year it seems we see some of the different faces in this group, as well for this meeting. Anne you are always coming so every time you see we have a different youth group but I think it's important we think about the sustainability problem, as well and how we can keep this youth -- you guys have been here today but how we can continue to participate in this IGF and maybe not just meet annually here but what we can do along this year into the next IGF, I think that would be also wonderfully good discussion that we can talk about.
Did I answer your question, Anne?
>> ANNE COLLIER: Yeah, maybe just one more in follow up. So you still feel that going to an ICANN meeting is a good place? Is it working? Yeah.
So maybe that's sort of a convenient place to gather youth -- I mean the ICANN meeting to gather youth from a number of countries to learn about a number of things. So your thinking remains the same that that would be a good way to do it or are you sort of shifting the focus more to just bringing youth to IGF as you always have and continue to train one another in a peer mentoring kind of way at the IGF?
>> DAVID USSO: I'm supporting NetMission and I think this question should be answered by NetMission because they are trying to organise a net gen ICANN process and we are trying to get youth on the policy and decision making process in ICANN so I would like to make the speaking sequence be like you and then the gentleman from Lebanon and the gentleman with the blue shirt.
>> WILSON LAM: Okay. Thank you. Thank you, David. My name is Wilson again I'm from NetMission ambassadors. So I heard Anne's questions on whether ICANN is the best place is a good place for youth to participate. So as one of the participants of ICANN 49 in Singapore we organised a next gen ICANN by the NetMission ambassadors. It's just small sessions around the whole ICANN agenda so we have around 30 participants and then around NetMission ambassadors there. So we -- the conversation of the participants is quite interesting.
We got participants from Tokyo -- I'm sorry; Japan. We have Korea. We have Armenia, we have Hong Kong. From the participants. And we also and we also have India.
So these participants' conversation actually comes from what we have done in the past four years. We have the youth forum in conjunction with the Asia-Pacific region for the Internet Governance Forum every year in the conferences we engage the local Asian students and after that we keep their contacts and keep their network so that whenever we have this kind of next generation at ICANN we engage those people and students from across Asia and bring it to the policy level to have actual discussions on policies that influence the Internet for example we are talking about the next generation is talking about international life name on how you will make the domain name more language friendly for all with different kinds of language for all peoples. Internet users. That does not know about English.
So these kind of policy discussions actually I think it's more on a momentum base. Because if you are not discussing it, then no one cares about it. And as a youth if you really want to keep these discussions on your level, you have to constantly participate in ICANN like they have four ICANNs each year.
And then we come to the IGF.
I think that this is my first time to IGF. I still know nothing about IGF. But then threw these three days of participating in the discussions, I attend different kinds of youth workshops especially the one we conducted the last day, I really see a good point is that which is different from ICANN it is not about momentum. It's about inference we throw our ideas out there and we test our ideas. We testify against different youths from different parts of the world and see what they think about our ideas from Asia. How do the youth think about Asian youth idea and then we can have collaboration on that and how to bring youth participation to a better level.
Because a problem we identify last day in the workshop is that we have a lot of youth participation in IGF. However, our voice never reached the policy making level. So we are actually doing the next generation at ICANN because that's the place where policy making happens. And that's where we are going to make our presence and that's how we're going to make our voice be heard by the policy level. And I think that's why I'm so motivated to participate in ICANN and that's why I think that going to ICANN for youth is a very important point. Thank you.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: And I guess next generation ICANN was separated into different meetings. When we hold the next gen ICANN process we can share that information with YCIGs and other members here. We have the gentleman there. Thanks.
>> AUDIENCE: Thanks I can't say anything about ICANN because I haven't been there but I wanted to say I think one of the of problems also is when you go to the IGF for the first time it can be quite intimidating this is my first IGF but I went to EuroDIG and Arab IGF before so I knew quite a lot of people already here and I sort of knew the topics but when I went to the Arab IGF in the first time in October it was I really felt a bit lost you're in this big hall there's a lot of people that seem to know each other because they have been friends for ten years already and here you are knowing nobody except maybe one or two people from our own country while you're there to meet the other people from around the world. I think one of the problems is what happens, because those adults they always have an organisation they work for they keep working for so they keep funding them to go here but with youth a lot of times it happens that you get a fellowship for single time where you go to one of these events but actually you need one or two events to get to grips with the concept and then you can actually efficient I'm not for you this is the first or second but I have to say I respect how much you have intervened and how much you have said in panels and things, really well done for that.
But I think I've been very lucky, also, because I don't want to but I got to say because of the RIPE NCC in the Netherlands IGF because they have been happy to fund me to go to several events. And I also mentioned with other organisations to arrange sponsorship for the next Arab IGF and IGF as well so I'm very glad to be here a few more times.
Because I've got to say when I was in the Arab IGF for the first time I felt so intimidated by what was happening and I can say I know I've been working -- I'm 20 now but I've been programming since I was 8. So I really know that I know about these topics. But I still was intimidated and I felt confused when I got there. So even if you know about the technical stuff of the Internet just because of the format and people there, it's hard to be efficient in these sessions when you're there for the first time. So I think we should also try to see how we can make sure that the young people that are coming here, they are not just involved for once or twice. But we can manage to let them keep coming in some way.
So yeah that was basically what I wanted to say.
>> YANNIS LI: It's really an excellent point because what I found myself it's true for adults as well as youth. It takes the universal reality is it takes at least two IGFs to kind of feel comfortable. Adults don't show that. But adults, as you said, have more continuous funding so they can keep coming back.
And I think that's a really important thing to note, that young people need more continuity. NetMission has got it down. You understand that need. And maybe you can communicate that to other youth serving organisations so that they can bring this continuity necessary continuity into the process. And no more one shot you know fellowships. Though they are wonderful and you get diversity that way, it only perpetuates the intimidation factor I think. Sorry.
>> AUDIENCE: So I would like to address the earlier issue of some of the problems that youth face for like coming to an IGF. And from just observing from the different sessions and other stuff during this week, I've had -- there's three main ones I've seen it's like lack of accessible just like not being able to come here because there's no funding or something like that. Another one is like lack of respect or for a better word like lack of a listener.
For all of these youth panels and everything we have come to, I mean there's been mainly youth there. But then very few older people that are listening to them. And when someone that is younger comes up to the mic, I've seen that like sometimes they are pushed off to the side oh they don't know what they are talking about or something like that.
And if there's just a way to just make sure that the youth voice is heard more. Because they are speaking. But many people are just not listening.
And then another thing, especially that I've seen is there's like a lack of readily accessible education on what exactly Internet governance is.
I mean I know there are many people that are very -- I'm an 11th grader and I know there are many people that are interested in world politics and stuff that affect them. But none of them actually know what Internet governance is or they are not aware that maybe the Internet has any like rules or anything. And so just if there was more -- especially where I live, I've never heard of any type of way to be educated on Internet governance. We have great things like Model UN where you can learn about how global politics and how to speak in front of people and how to have the right wording but there's nothing on Internet governance. Just that what you do online actually has an effect. And what happens here can have a huge effect on your daily life.
Those are just kind of like the three things that I've mainly seen while here.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Since we are almost running out of time, we want to give -- you had a point, you had a point, you had a point, you had a point. One minute each. Be very brief so here and then you and then from South Africa and then from NetMission and then we will go into -- we want to take the YCIG, what is this space. And take this into that briefly. Then we think about youth and this IGF and your mandate whether it's going to be a new -- is something going to be new and how youth can continue these not only here at the national IGF but also the national Internet governance processes, the regional processes.
So I want you to speak about that as you speak. Please make it very short. If you only give a few seconds that would be great. Thank you.
>> JONATHAN SSEMBAJWE: Thank you. Yes, I'm Jonathan. I'm going to talk about the barrier of youth involvement in IGF as it was raised by the madam here. Many organisations, especially the Private Sector and other organisations have not yet realized the need for youth participation and younger people participation in the Internet governance and other issues. So I think we should find more ways of involving and letting different organisations know that really youth should be involved. Remember youth are the highest users of Internet all over the world.
Another thing, another aspect of the low Developing Countries, when you look at the low Developing Countries, many youth are not using Internet for productive work, for development activities. They use it to pass time, for leisure and other such stuff.
So we also need to encourage young people to use Internet for productivity. This will automatically bring them to Internet governance.
Another thing parents and teachers do not know what their children do on the Internet. So when they done know what their young people do they cannot support them so we should also bring them on board to know what these young people do. So that they kind of support them. Thank you so much.
>> AUDIENCE: Yeah so for this part I see as the biggest question where do you learn about IGF and I wanted to give an example again of myself and Nathan who just came here well like before the NL IGF we didn't know anything about IGF or Internet governance at all but we had a very good education by just going to the NL IGF and listening and it was like an environment of you can ask everything and everyone will just answer your questions and don't say you're strange or you don't know what you're talking about.
Then when we came here, we had the help of our delegations of 35 members or something. And 3 or 4 or 5 who are very open and want to explain to you the history of the Dutch delegation. So I think it's very important that each country has its own IGF where you can go and see what it is or what it is about. And you see -- get a taste if this is something for you or not. And then again the best learning school is being here. And I really agree with the point of not being once but going twice or three times. Because now I think now on Friday I've got hang of it. And maybe next year we can do more.
And last point I wanted to make is that actually yesterday we met with all of the young people here. And saw each other, before that I maybe saw three or four faces. But that was it. So it's really important that really practical and small thing you can do is organise on Monday a meeting for all young people and see each other's faces so you have someone to talk to and someone to team up to for people you want to talk with who are older and also grab new people by the hand and say let's go here or let's go there.
>> AUDIENCE: I just wanted to mention to learn more about the IG issues. I don't know if you've heard of the DiploFoundation. They do a lot of good work. I'm actually part of a nine week course now about introduction to Internet governance and especially from an African perspective so people like the DiploFoundation are -- maybe you should check them out.
>> WILSON LAM: Hello, Wilson here speaking. Before I'll just make a comment on a few other comments on the floor. But as for I agree with you guys youth that coming to the first IGF is intimidating because I know nothing about IGF. And then I saw there's a lot of workshops and a lot of reports, a lot of links and I don't know what's happening. So it's really a very good thing to have like an IGF 101 information kit or survivor kit for that. And that's what we did in the Youth Internet Governance Forum back in August in Delhi. But another thing is that when I come to this workshop, I mean come to the IGF, I saw this Youth Coalition on Internet Governance and it seems like a very important thing in the IGF. They have this workshop. They have this strategic discussion on how youth involvement in this IG can be done however. And then I go on to their Web site. I see some funny stuff.
We are in the year of 2014. And then the information is somewhere in 2012 or 2010. I don't know what's happening about the Web site and I saw the Chairman should be Rafik, right? I don't think he is Rafik so I was having this interesting thought about what's happening today.
Because we have a lot of participation last -- yesterday. And we see this right now.
So my question to the panel and to all of you here, it's what's happening on YCIG. And what have we done? Because young people -- youth participation or to facilitate the youth participation we really need to give a hand on that. And perhaps the YCIG panel can take the lead in providing first step is information to the youth. Thank you.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Thank you. I'll answer some of those questions about the Web site. You find the Web site is -- yes, it's very outdated. The information here is 2012, 2011, 2010. This is because the Youth Coalition as I point out is something that's -- the Dynamic Coalition of Youth, the Dynamic Coalition of the IGF, has been there since around five years ago. And they have other Internet governance discussions. And they had a limit on the age of people who were here. They said that in the chatter it's for people who under 25 years old so we found that most of them went to 30 and now we need to find people to turn this over to and that's when we had this discussion and we tried to reach out to the IGF for them to give a decision this year because it's not been very consistent because not many have been reaching out to have a decision here.
So this is an interim committee. We're young people. We met in Singapore in March. And we started thinking about, how can we re-energize this? We met again in London. And we have had a few Skype calls. And just talking about there's a space and we need to make sure that young people are brought on board. So yeah we are an interim committee. And I think one of the of action plans that we should do as part of the Strategic Planning the first thing we should do I'm sure most of you have been writing your contacts down. We want to reach out to you later so you can have online elections. And this will take -- we'll have regional representations from different regions. And then something else that a remote participant actually has e-mailed someone suggests that they start preparing a best practices paper and forum for the next years IGF on how to enable and improve youth participation in Internet governance.
The person, Juha Leinonen from Finland, is a participant from a pre-event of the EuroDIG 2014 in Berlin. So Juha continues to say I followed two best practices session and they seemed very good perhaps as someone mentioned in the wrapup session that the first real tangible thing that the IGF produces.
So maybe a BPF on youth participation would create something real thanks.
So these are some of the things we need to start thinking about. Like you read about the BPF of online child protection, a BPF on improvement of the IGF so we need to start thinking about preparing a document and talking to the MAG about a BPF on youth and those kinds of ideas so yes that's where we are right now we have around 10 minutes to wrap up and talk about the goals. What do you think the YCIG should do. Bring forth some ideas. And then just to bring to your attention, there's a call by the different Dynamic Coalitions for them to ensure that this is the call to the IGF that the role of Dynamic Coalitions in main sessions in programme development and they should have more of a role the Dynamic Coalition in programme development more defined roles and responsibility for the Dynamic Coalition and producing outcomes of the IGF.
Then clear processes for their MAG to consult Dynamic Coalitions expertise in their focus and in cooperation with the Dynamic Coalition into the WSIS +10 review then support financial resources for the coalitions these are calls by a Dynamic Coalitions, the net neutrality and other Dynamic Coalitions they want us to support this call because they are going to make this statement to the IGF. And I think it's something we would like to support but I would love to hear your thoughts just briefly what is the next step after elections about BPF about the chatter can you set up a Working Group here to look at the chatter see if it's relevant. These are some of the things we need to think about in this planning. And then we can discuss more online we don't have to do everything physically we are a digital generation. So you then you.
And I would love if you can speak very briefly please just make it one minute because we have ten minutes.
>> AUDIENCE: Sure, uh-huh, I have something very practical what would be my advice maybe to people here in the room that say like okay I want to go next time as well and I don't know how to get funding or I don't know how to do it the thing I went and the reason why I went to three events already and I had almost no trouble finding sponsors the reason for that I tried to propose for workshops, make sure I'm on panels because what I notice is if you organise a workshop there at an event or if you are on two or three panels maybe it's really easy to get onto that, then it's so much easier to go to a company or organisation and say you know what I'm going to have so much exposure at this meeting I'll be at this panel and organise this workshop and then it's easier to get sponsorship because there's more benefit for the sponsor if you can just like you know if you're in one or two sessions an you can maybe mention them or at least people will know you're from that organisation.
So that's not something that maybe the coalition should do but the just something for people in the room and other people to just go write a proposal or e-mail people that are organising other panels. So that would be my advice.
>> AUDIENCE: I just wanted to ask a question. You said the Youth Coalition are for people who are younger than 25?
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Under 30.
>> YANNIS LI:30.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Under 30.
>> AUDIENCE: So some of us are over 30 so what happens then?
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: You come in as an advisory role. So like she is doing really awesome work with youth. And she's one of the people who would love to continue to advise us because young people don't know everything clearly. They are doing great work at the ITU and we need them to advise us.
>> ANNE COLLIER: You just need to communicate that to adults, so that you're welcome because they don't know that they can come. I didn't know but I just came.
Because I love you all.
But just let us know that adults are welcome. But don't talk too much.
(Chuckles).
>> ANNE COLLIER: Like me.
>> AUDIENCE: Well, just one thing is just like if there could have been something like this session at the beginning of the IGF, this IGF, just so that all of the people here can see there are other people they can talk to people they can interact with like people of their same age. It's great to have this at the end. But if this was also at the beginning so that we could start getting all of these people together and they could maybe actually -- they will have a stronger voice if they know there are other people that will support them.
>> AUDIENCE: Yeah I totally agree to that and to add to that like when we got an e-mail from our organisation you're going and these are like the programmes and our Dutch programme there should be a best practice paper, one paper that just says well go to this meeting the first meeting. Meet these people and like three or four things like this maybe beforehand how you get funding. It should be just written down in a very small document that you can read like a youth briefing indeed.
And for the rest, I think that for next IGF it would be cool and also to have more youth participation in sessions. And get things a bit more speeding up that you could try to get the MAG to get some sessions a Co-Moderator who is below 25 and can also think about giving youth a voice in different sessions that are not particularly about youth but where the youth voice is very important to be heard.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm also thinking of talking to the organisers of the entire IGF to get at least for one youth representative in the Opening Ceremony like the one we had last time when we go to Government officials and representatives from the UN at least to give the youth -- even if five minutes or two minutes to also talk in that big Opening Ceremony. I think to make the youth feel part and parcel of the IGF. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Sorry, I just wanted to -- I just really feel that we have some brilliant ideas especially about trying to get more people on a panel which we always talk about and I think actually I have a suggestion I think the YCIG is a platform that maybe we can ask people who are coming before the event and sort of list a list of young people that have come and topics of interests and beforehand and try to reach out to different panels and say hey we have these young people and please try to include them in your panel, as well I think the Web site is also one of the problems that I think we should try to get better on the mailing list because actually we opened a Facebook group recently I think everyone here needs to join and I think we can have better communication and also maybe have some information sharing on our Web site and we can try to really build a platform and then try to have some more -- to make sure our youth is better prepared before this event to sort of maximize our impact within this IGF.
>> AUDIENCE: How do I find the Facebook group?
>> AUDIENCE: I just got some wrapups on what we can do for next year. We've got some different ideas. Great ideas from the gentleman there. We need to engage more youth in the beginning of the IGF so we can meet each other so we can have some drinks or some informal social events or we can organise a workshop. So those capacity building workshops, it can be done. And we are planning to do it in the next year. And the other things will be like the information kit and maybe like also like the youth facing for YCIGs and we can have those ideas and briefing information on IGF to share with the YCIG members.
And also for the Web site I think it's very good point you have. Some reconstruction on this. Then we can have all the information about the info kit or even like the event details. And also the statements, things to be put online. And for the workshop we probably need -- we are organising one this year which is the workshop 173 we think this is a very important points that you guys have made workshop is important to get more youth be involved in the discussion then we are also trying to do this in the future, planning to do this. And also for the statements as what was just mentioned about the statement and probably maybe about -- yeah, we would like all of you guys to think about we support this kind of statement and see if we can move these to the next step. And I'll vaguely introduce more about the statement and we got everyone to have some suggestion on this.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Before that we'll say something for just seconds, ten seconds.
>> AUDIENCE: Okay. Thank you very much. I've heard brilliant ideas from all of you and all I can say from an advisory point of view is that this conversation should not just end here but online wherever you're planning to participate in the meetings we need to keep talking to our friends, a friend of a friend, a friend of a friend. So in the place of each one teach one because these are the only tenets that can foster youth participation. Capacity building and inclusion. Thank you.
>> ANNE COLLIER: Just a question about procedure. Everybody uses different social media, right? So could you identify the No. 1 central place where everybody can go? Is that the Facebook group? And if so, is it Facebook/Youth Coalition or just tell us.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Okay it's Facebook group. I think if you -- e-mail just note it down then we'll send to you the link we just want to wrap up it's 10:30 the session was to end at 10:30 so this is the statement which other Dynamic Coalitions would like us to endorse and they are going to read this and take this to the IGF, the MAG.
So it's about how Dynamic Coalitions their goal within the IGF. So they want a role of the Dynamic Coalition both in the main sessions and also in the IGF meeting they want more defined roles and responsibilities for Dynamic Coalitions in producing outcomes. Then they want clearer processes for MAG to consult Dynamic Coalitions for expectation in their focus areas and in cooperation into their work in the WSIS plus ten review this is the IGF and all of the kind of mandates and also they want support for financial for Dynamic Coalitions work between IGF meetings so this is a statement which has just been said like five minutes ago -- not five minutes but like 30 minutes ago so I don't know if there is anybody who would like to oppose that statement or thinks this is not a good thing can raise their voice. I think it's a good thing from a personal point of view I think as youth we should support this as the Dynamic Coalition.
One thing I think should come out of here is we should think about the youth chatter. I would like people to take if possible for a Working Group to look at the YCIG chatter from various regions. If you are interested, I would like you to volunteer and then we are going to work online on that. Just look at it. Then something else that I was thinking about is about the elections. From here. We can do online elections for each region. So I don't know. Who has points on that? The statement, elections. The youth chatter looking at it. If we need to extend the age from 30 to let's say 40 or 50 because there are not so many young people here. The age bracket okay something else the BPF let's think about that on those points then we wrap up.
>> AUDIENCE: What's your idea about an election? I don't recall.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Pardon?
>> AUDIENCE: Can you explain the election, what you said.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Elections I was just thinking if possible we can have representatives from various regions like Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, North America. And then we are globally represented the way the GNSO Council the way other spaces are organised but that's subject to the YCIG chapter we have to look at it because there's clear procedures on the YCIG chapter.
>> AUDIENCE: I think the first step is to have volunteers toward a Working Group and we can probably make up discussions for the online mailing list or Facebook.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: We have -- sorry; a mailing list, a Google group. Go to YCIG.org. Then you'll see a link there to subscribe to the mailing list. Somewhere on -- this is my right. Yeah, on the right. Yeah, you subscribe. Then from there we can take the discussion online. Because I want if possible I don't know if you are interested to be on the Working Group I would really love for you to state your name for the record. If you are interested you can just --
>> AUDIENCE: Yes of course.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: You can take a mic and state your name for the record for transcript purposes.
>> OCTAVIA KUMALO: Octavia. I would be interested if I make the cut.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Yes. No problem. Your name and your country, if possible.
>> JONATHAN SSEMBAJWE: I'm interested. Jonathan Ssembajwe from Uganda.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Who else is interested?
>> ANNE COLLIER: If adult advisors are allowed, Anne Collier from connectsafely.org in the United States. I would be happy to participate.
>> AUDIENCE: I would sure be happy, as well Dhijl from the Netherlands. Sorry about my difficult name. I would be happy to join.
>> PIM THIJR: Yes. Pim Thijr also from the Netherlands.
>> NATHAN BEERMAN: Yes, Nathan Beerman. It's like beer man. In the Netherlands.
>> SHAROLINA VILLATA: We are interested, too. Sharolina Villata from Guatemala.
>> WILSON LAM: Yes. My name is Wilson Lam. I'm interested. Thank you.
>> YANNIS LI: I have to state my name, as well? Yannis Li from Hong Kong, as well.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: Ephraim Percy from Kenya.
>> DAVIS USSO: David from Hong Kong.
>> EPHRAIM PERCY: We'll hear from David and then Yannis to wrap up the session. And thanks for coming, thanks for spending your time and the Working Group we'll get you on a separate mailing list and we can get in touch more online. So for those who volunteer spell your name your country or region and your e-mail address so we can keep in touch with you. And David and then Yannis will wrap up the session. And thank you so much for coming.
(Applause).
>> YANNIS LI: Actually I think, Ephraim, you did a good wrapup job. We just need to work hard and work online.
***
This is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. 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.