The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> We all live in a digital world. We all need it to be open and safe. We all want to trust.
>> And to be trusted.
>> We all despise control.
>> And desire freedom.
>> We are all united.
>> MODERATOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to our workshops discussing public-private partnerships for digital capacity building. Our session today is divided into two parts. The first one is going to be a 30-minute panel discussion with our experts. And the second one is going to be a hands-on enterprise design thinking workshop to hear your thoughts and opinions from our lovely audience. I would love to start today by introducing our panel. And I am going to start with Pedro Lopes, who is serving since 2021 as Secretary of State for digital economy in Cape Verde and the first studies of Cape Verde and being the founder of Generation be Bright, a youth empowerment organization. He also was selected in 2018 by MEPAB as one of the most influential people in the world of Afro descent in the world under 40 years ago and was chosen by former President Obama to be the first leadership of his foundation in Africa, Obama Leaders. Pedro, welcome to the session.
I would like to introduce Milton Cabral who during the last two years has been involved in most of the initiatives that promote the tech innovation ecosystems for startups, advising government initiative labeled Cape Verde digital to the implementation of a country's strategic plan to promote digital transformation and tech entrepreneurship. Milton, welcome with us.
I would also love to introduce Joceline Medina, who is a popular artist who appeared in top charts that measured the best musicians and the highest position at such a young age at Portugal and appeared in several local and international TV channels. She is an active member to highlight the intersection between arts and computer science. An inspirational character around the world. Welcome, Joceline.
I would also love to introduce two of our IBM experts with us today on site, Melissa Sassi, who is a chief (?) of IBM hyper products accelerator and student experience at IBM, focusing on tech skills, digital building. She is also the founder of mentor nations, a youth led digital skills movement in Africa and chair of IEEE's digital intelligence working group. Welcome, Melissa, to the session.
And I would love to have also Tavares who is a graduate software engineer with more than nine years technical consulting experience in staff and currently working at IBM in Budapest as a technical consultant. Since 2020 she is also working with Cape Verde digital team as a digital partner and ambassador. And public agency promoting values of entrepreneurship and innovation. Welcome, Nadine, with us.
And lastly but not least I would love to welcome Jake Bell, who is an international partnership manager in cog.org where he supports partner around the world who are working to bring computer science to every student with an emphasis on reaching young women and under-represented communities. He started his career in international relations working at Columbia University Asian institute, the council on foreign relations, the U.S. department of state and the White House. Welcome to our session.
And I would love to start with an opening statement from Pedro. Pedro, you have the floor.
>> PEDRO LOPES: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. I would like to say hello to the panelists, everyone on the panel. Also to everyone who is watching us in Poland.
I think it's fantastic that we can discuss what we are doing here in Cape Verde. It's important to train more and more young people to be prepared for the wave of the future. And we want to train people but also attract talent to our country. That is one of our goals. I hope this session will be great to discuss what we have done in Cape Verde and also give us insights of things that we can do in the future. Thank you very much.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Pedro. I would love to start with the questions to our panel. And I would love to start with you, Milton. And I'd love to see, what are, according to you, the influencing factors that affects access to digital education, based on your work to expand the access to digital capacity building programs. You have the floor.
>> MILTON CABRAL: Thank you, Salma. So, very briefly, I believe that I can -- mentioned two critical factors that I believe that impact in access to digital education. One of them is the access to appropriate devices, I believe, getting assets to proper devices to connect to the internet. It's a key factor. But another one, it is many fold and affordable connectivity. Today we cannot talk only about connectivity. We must talk about meaningful connectivity. And in spite our 80% of internet administration here in Cape Verde, we still feel that we are far from being -- from having a significant advantage compared of the potential -- with the potential that the internet can offer to us.
So, this is the two factors that I believe it's relevant to critical factors for the digital -- yeah.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Pedro, it's a very important -- thank you, Milton. Sorry. Thank you, Milton, for a very important point on infrastructure.
And Pedro, would you like to add anything to this point?
>> PEDRO LOPES: No. Is very important. I believe that in Cape Verde we are doing all the efforts. 80% of the population have access to internet. If we compare it with the rest of the continent, Africa that is just 40%. We are doing fantastic effort. Of course, our goal is to reach 100%. We want everyone to have access to internet. And the ones that cannot afford it should be the government to support that. So everyone that wants to learn, wants to use internet as well to create their own business and they don't have the means in the beginning should be the government and that's why we are doing all the efforts here in Cape Verde to approve a law that will make internet as a basic goods for everyone that cannot afford it, as we have for electricity and as we have for water as well.
Today internet is very, very important for knowledge and as we know, knowledge is power.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Pedro, for this enlightening points. And right now I would love to address Melissa and hear your opinion about how do you describe the different forms of digital gaps that exist in today's modern world from social barriers perspective.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Thanks, Salma, thanks, everyone, for having me. You know, I focus on a few different things and I think first and foremost it's that, you know, definition of what do we consider digital literacy? You know, what is that standard framework that young people or people of all ages have access to when it comes to making meaningful use of the internet? And one of the areas that I focus on is making sure that we are not just consumers of technology. You know, we are creators, we are makers, and we are doers empowered by technology.
My favorite framework was endorsed by the IEEE recently, and it's a framework from the DQ Institute out of Singapore. And there are eight components or eight competencies that are included in this framework. Why do I mention this? Let's assume you have access. Let's assume you have affordable access. Let's assume that includes, you know, devices and internet. You've got to have the skills and the access to skills to really become that creator, economically empowered, you know, driving good healthcare outcomes, et cetera.
So, imagine you've got this wheel of competencies that you're dialing up and you're dialing down, depending upon, you know, what you're interested in. But we know that, you know, in less than 30% of technical work forces are women and girls. So, it's incumbent upon us to make sure that we are enabling and empowering young women and girls with the right skill building opportunities, the capacity building opportunities so that they have access to curriculum, access to content and local languages, access to mentors and rolemodels. But they are also empowered to say, okay, how can I use this for economic empowerment? How can I use this to create a mobile application, to create a business, to facilitate something bigger than just, again, telling everybody where I am at every moment in the day and what I'm eating for lunch. Thank you.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Melissa, for this important point on gender perspective and the gender divide.
Nadine, I would love to address you and hear your thoughts about this point and about the social barrier and also the financial resources and how it plays a key role in this.
>> NADINE TAVARES: Say Salma, hi, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
I will pretty much continue on what Melissa was saying because I definitely agree with what she is saying. It's not just the access to all of the resource. But is giving the power, especially to the girls, right? I'm going to bring this more to the gender on how to use that to empower themselves. And seeing the online work, not just a place where I will have fun, but a place where I can learn, where I can generate my income and a place where I can have opportunities. And when we look on the cultural barrier, we know that the females are either oppressed or a lot of those cultures, we can go to Afghanistan, right, and we are going back to the time where certain countries in this world is actually not allowing girls to go to school. And this is the type of thing that the digital world can give back the power to the girls, that no matter where you are, we all have the ability to use the tools to be the ones creating, transforming and doing something spectacular, actually, regarding of anything.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Nadine. And thank you, everyone, for your valuable contributions.
Right now we would love to hear the audience's opinion and we have our first poll. And you can participate in it through Zoom. And the first question is, which of these factors do you think influence the most access to digital skill building in your country. Is it a social-related gender bias? Is it financial resources? Is it lack of infrastructure in your country? Or is it a divide between urban and rural areas?
And we have 30 seconds to vote for the poll.
>> For those of you on the room, if you're not connected online, you can feel free to hold your hand up if you'd like on what number you want to vote for. Yeah?
>> SALMA ABBASS: The first one is social-related gender bias. The second one is financial resources restrain. Lack of infrastructure, or the divide between urban and rural areas.
So, which of these factors plays the most as a barrier in your country to access to digital skill building? So, for you --
>> MELISSA SASSI: I think for the organizers here, if you could show the poll up on the screen, instead of Salma. That would be super helpful. That way everybody in the room and everyone joining can see. I'm going to vote 4.
>> SALMA ABBASS: I think I'm voting 3. Okay. So I think that the second option has the most votes.
>> MELISSA SASSI: It looks like it, financial resources.
>> NADINE TAVARES: Financial resources.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Yeah. The second one. Okay. So, thank you, everyone, for your contribution. Right now we are going to continue our panel discussion. And the second part is about digital capacity building. And I would love to address Jake and ask you, according to you, what's the impact of connectivity and access to data on digital abilities building, especially for youth, according to your experience in building partnership and, you know, communicating with under-represented communities? Thank you. The floor is yours.
>> JAKE BELL: Perfect. Wonderful. Thank you so much for letting me participate in such an important conversation. We are a nonprofit organization that works to make computer science education available to all students and all schools. So, obviously, for that to happen, connectivity is hugely important so there certainly are what we call unplugged resources or resources that you can use to teach computer science that don't even require computers, right? You can teach the concepts using physical things that you can find around your house or around the school. But, obviously, those can only take you so far. And if -- we would just increase the digital divide without solving the connectivity issue.
One of the frameworks that I think of is called the cape framework, c-a-p e, it's from ACM and driven by Carol Fletcher and Jace Warner. You think about it as a pyramid and the base of that pyramid is capacity. And then you have access. And then you have participation. And then you have experience. So, now in the context of getting computer science into a formal education system, the first step is the base of that pyramid, which is the capacity. So, that's where that infrastructure piece goes, right? If a country or a school system or whatever it is doesn't have the basic infrastructure in place to be able to provide devices, internet connectivity, the rest won't matter. You can't build the rest on top of that if that doesn't exist.
And then, of course, there's access, right? Even if there is connectivity, even if there are devices, there are still cases where students don't have that access. That goes back to Milton's point about meaningful access. Just having it there isn't enough. You have to remove those barriers to get those students access.
We think a lot in the work that we do about making our content available in off-line ways which is something our team is working on. Teams all over the world and different curriculum providers working in that space. Obviously another huge one is content that works well on a mobile device, right? So that we can reach students where they are and we have seen our partners around the world, especially during COVID, when low resource environment when students are working from home, they are sending out lesson plans via WhatsApp and taking printed digital -- I'm sorry, printed physical packets to the homes of their students, you know, so it's amazing to see what teachers are doing to reach students. But we really have to solve the connectivity and the access piece if we are ever going to take it to that meaningful place where students are able to build those skills.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Jake. It's really impressive how people are trying to find new ways to counter the digital divide and the digital gap that exist in today's world.
And I would love to see Milton, do you have anything to add to this point from your perspective? Milton, I think that you are still on mute.
>> MILTON CABRAL: Okay. Mention about what Jake said. Again, talking about meaningful connectivity. We have meaningful connectivity when people can use an internet every day, using an appropriate devices with enough data and a fast connection. And we have this perception and this -- we are aware about that here in Cape Verde and that's the reason that we are making great efforts to guarantee the infrastructures needed to guarantee connections to the country, connecting the country internationally through submarine cables but also create some policies and instruments that will allow peoples from different segments of necessity to get access to data, but to get access to meaningful connectivity also.
So, I just agree with Jake, connectivity and the infrastructure layer is the base for everything.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Milton. Pedro, do you have anything to add regarding this point from your perspective?
>> PEDRO LOPES: Yes, Salma. Well, here in Cape Verde we have a project called web lab. Web lab are containers, both containers higher than normal, which kids can learn how to code and they can learn robotics and they have access to internet.
So in a small country, here in Cape Verde we are 500,000 people, so we train more than 30,000 kids with a web lab. And what we learn is that school dropouts got reduced because of that project. And also they become improving their grades on mathematics. So it's really important for us that the system, the school system also thinks how can we have connectivity in spaces that normally youth are present. In Cape Verde we have this project and also we have a project called digital squares. It's a place where everyone can have access to internet in different parts of the islands. We have more than 130 digit squares where people can have free access to internet.
So, it's important to create access, but then it's important to tell people what to look for, because the internet is a tool. So, it's not just for entertainment. So, we need to give possibility for young people to use it as a powerful tool as it is.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you so much for all the impressive examples. And right now considering all the barriers that cause the digital gap around the world that were analyzed, Melissa, what do you think are the key resources that can be leveraged to ensure the digital capacity building for future generations?
>> MELISSA SASSI: I think there's both, kind of, the formal aspect and the informal aspect. You know, one of the things that we had the opportunity at IBM to do is collaborate with Pedro, Milton and others to create a National Day of Code where we brought, you know, singer song writers, musicians like Joceline together with us to demonstrate how anyone could learn to code and anyone could explore the introductory building blocks of computer science or AI or machine learning or data and analytics. So I think there's that public-private partnership aspect of things that you're not going to do it alone and not be successful alone, whether you're a big, multinational corporation like IBM or, you know, you are working in the government sector somewhere. It really requires everyone to come together.
And then I think the other aspect is having this framework of we are going to go do this thing, we know we are going to do this thing. Now what is it that we are going to do and what are those fundamental things that we want to teach? When we did this National Day of Code, did everyone in the country come across as an engineer and are they now building mobile applications and creating AI solutions? Obviously things don't get built in a day but you've got to start somewhere. And I have been really excited to see the work that's happening in, you know, Cape Verde with their focus on digital skill building for youth, but also on inspiring and enabling and empowering early stage entrepreneurs to build in scale. So looking at how do you learn and how do you apply and then how do you help to incubate and accelerate those ideas. Because we hear so many examples of, you know, tech bro from Silicon Valley coming onto the continent and creating this amazing solution and getting funded without necessarily having that, you know, local context or that local dialect or real, true local understanding. So, I think a few of those things are the secret sauce.
Lastly, I will share, going back to the framework I mentioned, as you're thinking about how do you capacity build with students, how do you teach young people about computer science, you've got to have this framework of what you're going to teach, how you're going to teach it and how you're going to make sure that people walk away with the right skills so that, again, they can make meaningful use of the internet. Thanks, Salma.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Melissa. And I would love to address Jake and hear your opinion about what channels can be leveraged from your perspective to ensure digital capacity building?
>> JAKE BELL: Yeah. First just completely agree with everything that Melissa said and building on that in the work that we do, there's two main pieces that we focus on. The first is the curriculum. There must be curriculum materials that are available to teach this. But it can't just be you create a curriculum and you put it out into the world. It has to have a lot of this -- I guess, kind of, the secret sauce that Melissa is talking about. One is the point that she made about it be localized and having a curriculum that's just available in English isn't going to do a lot of people any good. So it has to be not only just translated, but then further localized, so it fits their local context using relevant examples, highlighting people that they see as rolemodels, that they can see themselves in, all of those pieces are critical.
The curriculum, the secondary, I think about is that curriculum, it has to be skills based. It can't just be rogue learning especially when we talk about computer science and that creative aspect. Just sitting down and learning can I take a test and answer the right questions isn't going to be sufficient. It's can you actually use these tools to build something, not only because that's the skills that students need but that's what excites students as we think about as we see students in classrooms engaging in computer science, that's why they love it is because they creative and hands on it can be.
The other area that we think about is really integrating it into the formal education system. You know, informal education systems and out of school opportunities are certainly important for a robust ecosystem, but if it's not were available in the formal education system you're going to miss a lot of students. And we really have to reach them where they are by making sure that it's available in that aspect.
And then the fourth area is that it needs to be foundational as well as vocational, right? So, if we think about every student having access to this, you know, and to Melissa's point, they are not all going to run out and become software engineers immediately. But anyone living in today's society needs at least a basic understanding of how these things work. We all carry around computers in our pockets, but how many people fully understand how they work?
That's all other the curriculum piece. And then the other major thing I would mention is the teacher training. We have to be able to support teachers to deliver this into a classroom. And as that curriculum is being developed and as those teacher training programs are being developed, we have to think about those teachers who have no background in computer science, because if we are going to reach every student in every school, you have to think about those rural areas where there isn't a trained computer scientist and can we develop a curriculum that is meant for them that they can pick up and become a lead learner with their students? They don't need to be the experts. But can they help guide their students on this journey so that they can all learn those digital skills together.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Jake, on an important highlight on curriculum focused on competencies and skills.
Right now we would love to hear the opinions of our audience and with our second poll question, which is, which stakeholder do you think plays the most important role in digital skill building in your country? And we also do have four major players. So, the formal educational system and government bodies. The nongovernmental organizations and UN agencies. The student associations on the local level. Or the big tech companies that exist around the world.
>> MELISSA SASSI: This one is a hard one for me because you've got this whole concept of multi-stakeholder approach. So, I think we are, kind of, almost forcing you into something knowing that, you know, everybody has really got to work together and without, you know, everybody working together, we are going to be everywhere and nowhere. So, it's a bit of a trick question, huh, Salma?
>> SALMA ABBASS: Yes, that's connected always to our next question. And I would love to address Milton and talk to you about the National Day of Code of Cape Verde. So, what was the problem that you were trying to address when you created this day?
>> MILTON CABRAL: Thank you, Salma., basically, in Cape Verde we are now with a big movement to create a critical mass of entrepreneurs and to transform across the country as a digital hub, as a tech islands. That's the concept that we are pursuing.
(Audio difficulty).
>> MILTON CABRAL: Technology concept of coding and attract mainly young boys and girls to develop their interests to coding and to learn digital skills. And the National Day of Codes, it's one of the different initiatives that we are pursuing, we are putting in place to achieve this goal. And the idea was to put together different stakeholders and we always trying to get involved in our actions of peoples that have a channel like artists and other personalities to engage the mass and to engage the young generation in Cape Verde in the digital development of the country.
And it was in this perspective Joceline dean Santiago, Dean Santiago was our ambassador. Joceline is now the new ambassador of Cape Verde digital and we have this perspective of partnership in this movement of creating a critical mass of young boys and girls that will use technology for the country development.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you so much, Milton. And I would love to address Nadine and hear your thoughts about what do you think was the impact of this day on the target audience that actively participated to bring it to life?
>> NADINE TAVARES: It was actually a surprising event to see a National Day of Code being created and have artists being part of it. But I think one of the most important things this event was remarkable for is quite an official statement from the country, you know, a country that is not a rich country. A country that has other issues, to, kind of, step up and say, hey, we are going to take this train, we are going to take the chance that now we have digital opportunities and we are going to jump into this. We are going to create a day of code. We do have all the other issues to focus on. We are focusing on that. We are working on that. But us as a country, as the government, as the authorities of Cape Verde digital we are going to take the opportunity that COVID has given us the opportunity that software world is giving us and we are going to give this power to our youngsters.
For me, this was the most impactful and the most meaningful cause of this entire event. And, kind of, seeing this on the young people that was part of the event. They felt that, oh, we have a power. You know, we are part of something. We are creating something. The country is creating something. There is a National Day of Code and our artists being part of it.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Nadine. And relating to the artist participation, I would love to have Joceline on stage and I would love to hear your thoughts about the intersection of arts and computer science and how we can use that to attract more young people to develop their digital skills and be ready for tomorrow's job market. Joceline, I think you are still on mute.
>> JOCELINE MEDINA: Can you hear me now?
>> SALMA ABBASS: Yeah.
>> JOCELINE MEDINA: Hello. Thanks for having me. I think by spreading the words because I think our young people and artists sometimes, we lack -- we have a lack of curiosity about code about proclamation. We don't know that all those platforms we use to share our work and to connect with people, they are built by programmation and codes. We don't think about it. Right now we have TikTok and we are constantly editing videos to post on social media. And all these platforms, they depends on codes and programmings. I think we need to spread the word about code and programmation because especially in arts, people don't know, we -- I don't think if I talk with my colleagues, they have no clue of what it is and all its importance. I think we all we need is to spread the word first so people can have -- can know and can feel the importance of codes and programmation.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Joceline. I would love to start with Jake, and I would love to hear your thoughts about, you know, considering your previous experience in driving partnerships to scale knowledge about digital skills, what is the multi-stakeholder approach you would recommend being adopted to bring different audiences into the implementation of an International Day of Code?
>> JAKE BELL: Thank you so much. There's no one group, one type of organization that's really going to be able to drive this. It really does take everyone coming to the table. I think a lot about we run a global campaign called the Hour of Code that we have been doing since 2013. And really the only -- the areas of the world where we see it having the most success are where they have really, kind of, brought together that ecosystem that has all of the players represented, right? So you need the private sector at the table. In many cases they can provide the feedback on, okay, what are the skills that we are actually needing to develop so these students can be employable in the future.
They also in many cases provide a ton of volunteers who can go into the classrooms and help support teachers to lead these activities. There's even cases where when we first launched the Hour of Code where different major companies would do home page takeovers, where they would help get out the message about the campaign.
Obviously, government has a huge role to play when it comes to reaching teachers, encouraging teachers to participate, kind of, getting their stamp of approval to the campaign. And then, of course, supporting those teachers, training those teachers all about, you know, to the point that was being made before, especially with people like Joceline, those rolemodels and influencers are hugely important to reach students. There's a ton of stereotypes that exist in this space where a lot -- especially as we think about girls and young women, it's culturally seen in many places, oh, that's just for boys, or that's just for people who are really good at math and those things aren't true.
How can we tap into a network of rolemodels who can help say, no, it's for everyone. It's for people who are creative and for people who have maybe never seen it before.
And then, you know, one of the other pieces talking about here is the role of multilateral organizations. So, working closely with different UN agencies or, you know, other of these bodies that can help set standards, that can help influence national governments, help support national governments in areas of the world where it may seem daunting for them to take it on but how can we build in this ecosystem where there are supports so that it doesn't seem like here's a huge campaign that you have to lead on your own, but here's your piece that you can take on and here's who else we are going to bring to the table that will be supporting you to make sure that this is a success.
And without that multistakeholders approach, it's really difficult to see any success in that area.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Jake. And Melissa, what can you bring to the table from the private sector perspective.
>> MELISSA SASSI: I think you could tell I was chomping at the bit to say something. I'm going to switch it around to something that, kind of, I don't know, made me feel inspired when we did this National Day of Code. And, you know, it was sitting down with Milton and Pedro initially, with Nadine and, kind of, talking about how could we make a difference, what could we do.
I think for me, having such a rich conversation with the team and us suggesting that we do this day and then, I don't know, X amount of hours later coming back and hearing that the prime minister said yes. I don't know about you all, but I come from a small town in the middle of the United States, you know, very rural and quite homogenous in terms of culture and access to computer science education. I was never exposed to computer science education. I thought it was for boys. All of the stereotypes that you think about. I never thought I would ever be standing on a stage at any UN event, ever. None of that stuff was accessible to me, nor did I ever think that I would go to this big fancy college or be a CEO or founder or work in big tech, all of that kind of stuff.
To have these amazing musicians like Dino and Joceline, you know, actually performing with us and having a chance to explain to them what is computer science, why does it matter, and them realizing that wait a second, this does actually matter to me. And wait a second, I can actually sit down for an hour with you all and I can do this? Like, are you sure it's not going to be, you know, too hard for me?
I think sometimes when we think about computer science, we think about algorithms and all these hard things. When in reality, a lot of us are just taught wrong. A lot of us are inspired wrong.
So I think it's really about us collectively, the private sector, the public sector, youth figuring out how can we come together and share our own skills forward in a way that's locally sensitive and involves amazing people like Joceline and Dino and progressive government leaders like Milton, like Pedro and hopefully cool people like me. Because I want to go to amazing places like Cape Verde. So there you go.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Melissa. Pedro, I would love to hear your opinion about what was just said, and do you have any other points to add from a public and government perspective? I think you are on mute as well.
>> PEDRO LOPES: Can you hear me?
>> SALMA ABBASS: Yes. Perfect.
>> PEDRO LOPES: I think Melissa said it all. This should be fun. Normally we try to put it as something very complicated. But, no. Should be fun. Should bring everyone on board. People like Joceline and Dino, they can spread the word. They are influencers, they are rolemodels and they are very important to spread the word. Governments should set goals how many young people we want trained in computer science in five years, in 10 years. So, that should be our responsibility as well. And then private companies. They have better employees. If they have people that are doing fantastic jobs on their companies, they will make more money. So, everyone -- I think everyone have an important role here.
And also NGOs. We got involved with also NGOs here in Cape Verde that help us spread the word. It was a second time that we did it. The first time we did it physically in all the web labs, the prime minister came along with us. He was learning how to code as well. Well, just the basic things. And when we shared the idea with Melissa, she said, okay, it's not because of COVID-19 that we gonna stop. I think -- I'm sorry for being the first to make reference to COVID-19 during this amazing conversation. But she said, well, we should continue. And we can continue. Let's use influencers. Let's use musicians because she knows and we told her that Cape Verde is a country of music. It's important to know and get to know the culture as well to know how to reach people.
So, for us, a small country in West Africa, 500,000 people, we want to reshape our history with technology, with innovation. And we are making efforts for it. So, Cape Verde the government organization, but is also made by the people like startups, NGOs, private companies and also mentors like Nadine and other people that are supporting us, that we can reach our goals.
It's time for us to take a look on how important it is to train young people to prepare them for the future. Because if they fail, the future generations fail, it's also our responsibility.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Pedro. Also an important point about localization to reach the audience and the young people.
And right now we would love to share with you before our second part, a small video about the National Day of Code in Cape Verde.
>> MELISSA SASSI: This is Dino de Santiago. That's what I get for not sharing the actual asset, you know.
>> Meaningful connectivity.
¶[ MUSIC ]¶
(Singing non-english).
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Nadine. And right now, we are at our second part. Melissa, you have the floor to explain the design thinking workshop.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Super. I would love to see a show of hands both in the room and online. How many of you have been exposed to design thinking before? Or when I say design thinking, how many of you know what that is? I'm going to raise my hand because I'm going to talk about it so I better know what I'm talking about or we are all in trouble.
I don't know if other folks who are online can raise their hands. But if you can either raise your hands physically or, you know, raise your hand in the platform, that would be super awesome.
So, for those of you who are familiar or maybe not familiar, for me, design thinking is one of the most important elements of being a good marketer, a good colleague, a good teammate, a good product manager. And it's also about someone who is really prepared for the future of work. It's someone who could be a designer, a freelancer, a developer, a data scientist. Kind of something for everyone. Including, you know, government, industry, whatever.
What is it? It's all about empathizing with your audience. It's about thinking about let's just assume I'm creating a product. I am creating a solution. I am rolling out some kind of game changing initiative or development opportunity. I have to think about who are the recipients of whatever it is that I'm going to be doing or rolling out. Who are the recipients of -- or who are the clients? Who are the customers? Who is the target audience? Who am I trying to reach or impact? What are their pain points, their frustrations, their aspirations, their wants, their needs, their goals, their objectives?
It's about empathizing with them, you know, being able to put yourself in their shoes and understanding things from their eyes. And when you're rolling out any kind of solution or service or initiative, you have to think about who are the beneficiaries and what do they want out of this. Who are your various constituents?
Now, there are a lot of different ways of going about design thinking. It's essentially a systematic way of gaining access into insights. It's about empathizing, observing, testing with your audience, if you will.
Let's say, for example, I created a mobile application to help the blind. All right? But let's imagine, which is true, I am not blind. And let's say I never talked to anybody who was blind. I don't even have anybody on my team, let's say, that's blind. Am I going to roll out the best mobile application? Probably not. Right?
Similarly, we see all kinds of situations where someone will build a platform, build a solution. Assume they are going to go out and change the world in every corner of the earth or they are going to go and launch here or launch there or do something outside of their community or never even talk to people in their community and just assume that they know what that other person wants. Not a good way, right?
Again, it's really about having a systematic process of gaining access into insights by testing, learning, evolving and continuing to empathize with your audience. There are lots of different ways of defining it. If you Googled design thinking, you would probably find I don't know how many different ways of defining it. But I think those are the best anecdotes that I can give you around why does it matter, what is it and how does it generally work.
I hope that was helpful.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, Melissa. So, basically, design thinking is a human centered design.
Right now we do have a slide that we shared in -- yeah, that we shared with the audience. And we would love also for you to participate. So, it's IBM.biz/IGF2021_Cape Verde.
>> NADINE TAVARES: It's on the chat.
>> MELISSA SASSI: For our organizers, do you have the ability to pull up the chat so everyone here in the room is able to see that link? Because what we would like everyone to do, including those of you in the room, would be to go to this link. So, again, IBM.biz, hopefully you can see it. There we go. For those of you who are following along virtually, we have got it up on the screen in a bigger fashion now.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Yeah. And, basically, it's all about four activities that we would love to hear your thoughts in. The first one is an empathy map. Imagine you are a potential stakeholder.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Hold that thought for a second. I think if we can pull up that link, that would be super. So, I think if we could pull that up on the screen. So, either Nadine or whatever is the best way of getting that up, that would be super.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Nadine, can you please share your screen?
>> NADINE TAVARES: Yes, I will do that.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you.
>> NADINE TAVARES: Here we go.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Yeah. It's about four activities. The first one is an empathy map. So you as a potential stakeholder, how does the proposal of creating an International Day of Code make you think, make you feel and make you say or want to do?
And the second one is, as-is scenario. We are going to imagine the concrete steps that you think should be implemented to make the proposal happen. And also as a potential stakeholder, what do you think are the pain points or the bottlenecks that we are going to see during the implementation phase and the big ideas. How to attract and engage the audience that we want in an International Day of Code.
And you can go ahead into the slides and enter your thoughts into the first one, which is the empathy map, by editing text. So, we do click right added text and write your thoughts into the slides.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Again, thinking about a National Day of Code in your country, in your corner of the earth, in your community. What does that make you say? What do you say about that? What does that make you do? What does it make you think about? How does it make you feel? And you can write those in the box.
And if you don't have access, if anybody wants to shout something out, I'm happy to -- I'm happy to take it down if that's an easier way of doing it. Because I know not everyone has their laptops with them. So, I have got mine with me.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Yes, please.
(Off microphone)
>> SALMA ABBASS: Oh (chuckles).
(Off microphone)
>> SALMA ABBASS: What does it make you think and what does it make you want to do?
>> MELISSA SASSI: I've got amazed under feeling. I've got excited. I think I spelled it wrong on my side. I will fix that. But amazed and excited.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Yes. And what do I have to do? First of all to contact, I believe coded organization, because I think as far what I have heard, I would have to need -- to do that.
>> MELISSA SASSI: You can contact IBM as well. We are here to help you, too.
>> AUDIENCE: And actually I believe I can do it. In Peru we are close and you are helping us use the IBM skills building courses. I didn't know you guys were doing things -- doing the National Day of Code. But I would contact you.
Regarding the pain points, I believe I will try to connect with the Ministry of Education because I would like rural areas and national schools to be involved. But it will need many communication strategies, because they don't usually get involved in this initiatives. Because they do not see this as important.
>> NADINE TAVARES: That's a big following what was done in Cape Verde. I think engaging as well the local authorities, which in this case is pretty much talking about Pedro, which was the Secretary of Economy and Digital. So I guess getting the correct or the vast context within the authorities is one of the key elements for the success.
>> MELISSA SASSI: I wrote down contact stakeholders, so that could be Ministry of Education, it could be even thinking about libraries, anchor institutions that are, you know, part of the community that could serve as influencing bodies, you know, organizations that have access to -- have access to people. They might have a location, internet access, devices. But, again, you can contact us at IBM, too.
>> MILTON CABRAL: I think it will be interesting also to identify the agent in the country that have the role of promoting the digital skills, for example, in the case of Cape Verde, (?) digital have an important role on that and we support every kind of initiatives that could bring this value to the community.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Country representative of digit skills, please.
>> AUDIENCE: This is Ines. I'm a teacher and orientation counselor. I would be excited about such an event taking place in my country.
My name is Ines, I-n-e-s. Sorry. Because it's written. So I would first think about partnerships, first with the government, especially the Ministry of Education, because the Ministry of Education is the one which will provide us with the right, the connectivity and affordability. So, this partnership, government, private or with telecoms with a private or government owned, so this is number one.
Number two, we would really need partnership with the Civil Society, those working on coding and also those working on rural areas, because I have worked in rural areas for seven years. And I know how this is hard to bring the technology to the rural areas or to bring the people or the students from those areas to technology, whether logistically or in terms of infrastructure. Thank you very much.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you. Would anyone like to add anything from the audience in here?
>> MELISSA SASSI: We have got experienced professionals, public-private partnerships, starting out with the Ministry of Education.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi, I'm (?) from Poland. I'm also working with (?) as NGO leader and also from academia I'm a researching skills, future skills of young people. And I didn't think about this day of coding and I was like, yeah, let's do it.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Let's do a National Day of Code in Poland. We are ready, by the way.
>> AUDIENCE: Yeah, yeah. We should talk. I was very excited --
>> MILTON CABRAL: I'm --
>> AUDIENCE: Yeah. What to do. Actually, we are doing a lot. And also after COVID-19, still COVID-19 is going, but in Poland we experience very big progress. Also moneywise. Some money are pumped into schools with 5G internet. So, building the capacity access.
But when I was doing my workshops and also talking with teachers, so I did workshop, actually, now for discovery of AI and you know how many girls were participating? None.
>> Wow.
>> AUDIENCE: Only boys. So we were thinking how to change that, you know? And I really like this idea of maybe showing the rolemodels of young people and also maybe girls that it's easy or maybe connecting with the industry, which is closer to girls, maybe fashion, maybe beauty. I don't know. Name it. But maybe it will be more interesting.
But I'm really excited if we can do it in Poland, personally.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Let's talk. I'm happy to share my contact after this or with anyone who is interested.
So, I think a couple of things. One rolemodels are super important. Rolemodels are critical. Someone who may look like you, someone who may have the same, you know, gender or gender identity, someone who may have the same language or culture or upbringing, someone you might look up to and say, wow, I aspire to be that person. And also examples that are relevant for that young person.
I go back to that day in university when I walked into that room and I looked around when I went to think about computer stuff, not knowing what computer science was and looking around and seeing it was all boys and me. And I felt like, wow, this may not be for me. How do we make sure that we have inclusive spaces?
Super.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Thank you, thank you, Melissa, and thank the audience for the amazing input. That we are sure will be translated into the IGF 2021 message.
So, in inconclusion we addressed the -- that influence access to digital skills around the world. We then moved to discuss the influential resources to digital capacity building. And at the end we presented the different views of our experts in implementing an international framework, including a multi-stakeholder approach and a National Day of Code.
We hope we can do the one in Poland. And we would love to --
>> MELISSA SASSI: And Peru, by the way.
>> SALMA ABBASS: Yes. Both of them. Thank you so much for your contributions. And we hope that you enjoyed the session and your time. Thanks to our speakers for your contributions as well.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Thanks, everyone. Have a great rest of your day.
>> MILTON CABRAL: Thank you, everyone.
>> PEDRO LOPES: Thank you, everyone. Bye.
>> We all live in a digital world.
>> Bye, everyone. Thank you.
>> We all need it to be open and safe. We all want to trust.
>> And to be trusted.
>> We all despise control.
>> And desire freedom.
>> We are all united.
(Session was concluded at 14:30 UTC)