Good day, my IKAR friend. Today we are very happy to have an interview with the digital minister, Ong Jui Tan, and together with me is Terry Cao. Terry Cao is the global marketing officer of SEMI. He also played role as the president of SEMI Taiwan. SEMI is the leading association for SEMI-conductor industry globally. So we are very happy to have Audrey with us today. So the question will start from Terry. Okay, thank you Audrey. First of all, would you like to introduce a little bit to the ICCN member about yourself and also maybe talk a little bit about your role to play in government or in the non-popular organization. We know you have very active in several non-popular organizations. Sure, good local time everyone and Audrey Tao is the digital minister in charge of open government, social innovation, and youth engagement. Before joining the cabinet I worked with Apple's Siri team for six years on computational linguistics and also participated in many free software and open source communities. Nowadays I mostly work with Taiwan's DG Plus plan or the digital innovation, governance and inclusion plan of which we can talk about more in the next few questions. Earlier you just mentioned how you charge up the DG Plus project for Taiwan. I think in region COVID-19 I think Taiwan very successfully to control the COVID situation of the pandemic. So would you like to share some of the experience of how the Taiwan government control the pandemic and how by the technology the Taiwan government can also help to control the situation? Certainly, yeah. As of today it's been more than 200 days in Taiwan with no local transmission cases. So we're by and large post COVID now. And the reason why is that we reacted really, really early on whereas many jurisdictions reacted this year. We reacted last year. Last December when Dr. Lee Wen-Liao, the whistleblower from Wuhan, posted their social media that there was an, quote, seven new source cases in the Huanan City market, unquote, whereas his voice gets silenced a little bit by his institutions in Taiwan. It's been reposted by young doctor PTC, which is Taiwan's Equivalent Reddits. And not only did it get upvoted so that the medical officers immediately took notice of it, but we immediately start health inspections for all the passengers flying in from Wuhan the very next day, the first day of 2020. So the idea of collective intelligence based on the absolute freedom of speech, of assembly, of the press and so on is really important because it's like a radar system. But notice the existing SARS 1.0 back in 2003 and notice that this time SARS 2.0 is rather like SARS 1.0. So we activated the yearly drills and so on something that we've been always preparing every year since SARS 1.0. And so I think the most important technology is definitely soap, which is chemical technology followed closely by medical mask, which is a physical vaccine. But the digital technology, although it ranks the third, it's important to make sure that people understand that if three-quarter of the population wear a mask and wash their hands, then the R-value of the virus will be under one, meaning that it will not spread in the community. So from early February to early March, we worked for 30 days making sure that in a masquerading system, everybody gets access more than three-quarter of people know how to use it with the help of 6,000 pharmacists, 12,000 convenience stores and countless civic technologies that wrote the apps to make sure that masquerading works smoothly. We did achieve the three-quarter KPI by March and then 90% by April, at which time the virus seeks to make an impact on itself. My advantage is I think the government really trusts the people and also with the support of the technology, which is also driven by lots of the civil organizations, so the app, which is very helpful for myself, so I can check from the app about what's in the community. Did you use the line chatbot or the app or the voice assistance? There's more than 100, so I was wondering which one you actually use. Eric, I think you saw it. I think the technology really also plays a very important role to help the government. Yeah, definitely. And I also want to highlight that because we publish the real-time mass availability in each farms every 30 seconds. It's not just open data, it's an open API, which enables not only people queuing in line to keep each other honest, right? Because if I queue before you, and I swipe my National Health Insurance card, you can check your phone that I actually bought nine or 10 medical masks per two weeks. That's our ratio. And it also enables independent data analysis like the OpenStreetMap community that analyzed the distribution and found out actually it's not very fair. At the beginning, it's fair if you look at the distance on the map. But if you take into account the time that people have to do per person for public transportation, for walking and things like that, it's actually not fair. People in rural places have to pay more time to access the pharmacists which you cannot see on the distance-only map. And so when MP Galhong and previously, data analytics VP at Foxconn did that's interpolation to our minister, Chen Shijong. Based on this shared API data, ministers didn't defend the policy at all, it just legislated to teach us. And it was our co-working 24 hours later, we worked with Convenience Store, enable much more fair distribution. Yeah, I think fairness and openness really helped to build the trust. Definitely. Could you talk about, I think you mentioned in one interview, saying using rumours against humour against the rumours to fight with the fake news building these pandemics. Can you say something about that? Sure. So the idea is called humour over rumour. And the idea very simply put is that in this time of stress and anxiety, many people would believe conspiracy theories, panic buying and so on. And all in all, we call it the infodemic, which is like the pandemic, except it's the virus for the mind. Right. So when people get enraged about something, upset about something, people would click the share button without fact checking, without checking whether it's true or not. Right. So there was a rumour that says instant noodle is going to run out very soon as people go out and panic buy instant noodles. There was a rumour that says all the tissue paper material is being confiscated to make medical musk. So people go out and panic buy tissue papers. And so how do we counter that? Well, we make sure that every time we see such a panic buying or a disinformation campaign within a couple of hours, there's a very funny picture rolled out by our premier or by our cabinet member that elicits this idea of humour of fun. Right. So for example, on the instant noodle one, our premier, Xu Zhenchang, our head of cabinet, just posted this meme of a lot of instant noodles stockpiled and say, buy as much as you want.  And then all the mayors in the townships and in the cities, municipalities of the agricultural lands posted, Hey, don't forget our fisheries too. Don't forget our fruits. Right. So we see the mayors of Pingdong and of Pai Nan of all sorts of agricultural cities just started posted. It's like a festival of agriculture. And so because it's really funny, right, you left, right? That you're vaccinated. The next time you see instant noodles running out, you will not feel the outrage. You will not share the conspiracy theory. Rather, you will share this very funny picture of instant noodle with some vegetables or fruits and so on. And so this is called humor over and over. Okay. Thank you for sharing. So let's let's talk about our meeting industry because our, you know, the economy that we are already in the meeting industry. And nowadays, the virtual meeting is become, they call it, we call it a new normal.  But what, but, but I, I found you are the, you are a fan of the virtual meeting. And how can we attract someone like you to attend a face to face meeting in the future, because we want to earn some money from your pocket. Of course, I think what's important is that the English word virtual actually doesn't mean it's less than real. It means it's more real than real. Okay. When we say these two are virtually the same. We're not saying these two are not actually the same.  That's what virtually means. Okay. Right? It's meant as something like literally, right? So when we're saying that this is virtually home, I'm saying that this is literally feeling like my home, right? If the virtual meetings are not in the same degree of familiarity or intimacy as you put it, as face to face meetings, then I wouldn't say that it's virtually a face to face meeting. I'll just say it's teleconference, right?  And so for it to truly qualify as virtual, as in virtual reality, I really need to feel real like as in reality. So a lot of my meetings nowadays take place in virtual reality. But these virtual reality meetings, first of all, there's a lot of social elements in it. I don't need to hold the controllers. I can just use my hands. And we can high five, we can hug, we can do all sorts of things, we can clap and so on. And all these numberable interaction patterns are within the XR space, the extended reality space. And the second thing is that it does not preclude the face to face part of it. So for example, we are having a face to face meeting now. But the audience is probably watching it from a two dimensional screen. Now imagine if we have another chair and empty chair here, and using augmented and extended reality, each of us can just kind of turn on our glass. And in addition of seeing each other, we now see the fourth speaker here. Then for that person, it's much more intimate. Because nowadays, with two dimensional classes, no matter how good the post production folks are, it feels like watching a movie. It feels like a large distance between the audience and the three of us. Now imagine if you can just get into the virtual reality and feel that you're on this table, or near this table, right? Not literally on this table as a plan. But anyway, the idea is that you can immerse into the co creation space. But the co creation space do take in some face to face space. So I don't think these two are mutually exclusive. If you really implement the virtual reality as a shared reality, that's virtually real. It's a great answer. So actually, it's linked back to my original question. Now, do you see there will be the new new type of the meeting format, after the pandemic, and also any kind of the event attendee, how they play different roles, it's kind of like a similar way of mentioning. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think what does COVID have taught us is that really linking to even a immersive live streaming experience does not require very high end equipment. You can do it with your phone, or with just a browser and a URL. So where as many people as recently as maybe five years ago or 10 years ago, did have some experience with immersive experiences, all the way back to, you know, the VRML ages, the early web. And these are kind of clunky. And people understand it's actually not virtually real. It's not real by any degree. Right. And so many people do not entertain the idea of that sort of immersive meetings, because they had a bad experience five years ago or 10 years ago. But now when they reevaluate, they found out it's actually pretty good. It's democratized and so on. So I think it's a great chance for us to clean the cash in our brain and accept that really nowadays with the fiber optics and 5G, which is like a virtual fiber optic everywhere, even in outdoor places, we can get into the low latency mode, where we do not I know you're nodding to this sentence, not my previous sentence. It's kind of difficult to tell. We have 4G connection. Wow. So do you believe those IT company will take the leading role in the future of the meeting industry? Yeah, I think a lot of these tools, like the GC environment that I personally set up in our national center for high speed computation, these are open source, meaning that these are developed by those purpose driven organizations. And anybody can just download and run copy locally, which makes sense. Because if each of your nodding and action have to go to some cloud in some other country and back, then we lose the latency benefits provided by 5G and fiber optic connection. On the other hand, if most of us are in the same jurisdiction, or in the same time zone, it makes much more sense for one of us to host such a meeting system instead of going to like a very long away data sensor for it to be processed and then going back, even just on live speed issues. And so I think the on-premise hosting and open source ones or very low cost ones will really take the lead. For example, previously in the two dimensional live streaming, really the dominant technology is OBS or the open broadcasting software. Everybody uses OBS to composite their two dimensional live streaming. And that's a piece of open source software. You can acquire it for free. You can modify it for free. And you can also distribute your own modifications. Wow, cool. So I have a follow-up for two questions. Some of you are meeting participants today. They are the meeting organizers. So probably they're not from the technology or IT background. So actually they are very interested about what's going on and they don't know how to adapt. So any advice you can tell the like the leaders like the meeting organizer or even person, how do you find that advice on to give them? Yeah, I would say it's actually easier to start a live stream or even a 360 live stream or a life like face-to-face live meeting in virtual reality like in XR space. Or if you want to do it audio early, there's also high-fidelity.io and so on. It's all very easy. So the most important thing to keep in mind is just that it gets better with practice. So with your phone, with your laptop, try it for a while. Try it for a few times. And you find out it's actually as easy as starting a FaceTime call or a Skype call. And then you get into the habit of doing it more often. And once you do it more often, then you're not reliant on any particular technological vendor because you would know the toolkit of the available choices there. And then once you're not subject to what we call the vendor lock-in, and then the creativity part of a professional organizer, professional curator, start to play more priority than if you're a vendor locked in to a certain solution provider, then basically your creativity is limited by the features that offer a downspent. But most of our members, they host the congress meetings like 100 people or even 10,000 people in the future. But how can they do that with the technology you just mentioned? And how can they make money out of it? Well, if you have watched any live stream, I think 10,000 people watching is considered a small audience. In our live streams, for example, the one they used to be broadcasted daily by the Central Epidemic Command Center every 2 p.m., right? 10,000 people small now, right? The entire country is watching that particular live stream, right? So, first of all, it scales really well. If you don't need to worry about the scaling issues, the internet is built for this. And the second question is, how do you monetize it, right? Well, in this case, of course, this GECC may also be an inspiration, because by the end of the GECC's daily press conference schedule, they run out of news to report, because every day is just plus zero cases, plus zero cases, and so on. And so they started selling agriculture products. They would put some watermelon, right? Or whatever, to symbolize the zero of that day. And then Minister Chen just don't start at the tour, right? Starting in Cundin, and then goes to all the agricultural places, all the different counties, all the way to Nantou and so on. And the press conference went with him, right?  And as long as you keep the mask on, on the more densely populated places, you don't have to do this contactless food panda or Uber Eats anymore. You can go to your favorite restaurant and say, Sinkula, right? And basically say, I'm still here, and so on. So when we rolled out the triple stimulus voucher, we built a lot of it upon the GECC press conference, a main message, which is safe now to go outdoors and shop. So I think a call to action is really important. When your audience is many time zones away, it's actually difficult to call them to attend a certain booth, which is what the organizer would do if they're physically in the same meeting. If you make sure that they can also do some actions online. For example, visiting an online booth, a virtual reality booth, and so on. Of course, that works pretty well. And I attended many online conferences that basically have breakout rooms. So after my keynote speech, for example, I will be shuffled with maybe 10 random persons to a smaller room where we can do a roundup introductions and then just start socialize. And more involved like the GovZero summits and so on, we even make sure that people order pizza or order the same kind of food before the teleconference meeting. So we can enjoy the same food together and so on. So there's a lot of possibilities to still make sure that the catering business, the associated business of exhibitions and so on, can still earn some money out of those large gatherings. But you have to plan it beforehand and because in Thailand we never had a lockdown. But we did at one time discourage large gatherings. So what many organizers did is that they organized a lot of satellite events and each satellite event is maybe just 100 people or less and preferably in an outdoor place because then you don't have to keep as long as social distance. But then simultaneously they watch the same keynote and then they break out in their own discussions and then there's still booths and there's still exhibitions. Okay, thank you. So the theme of this this congress in Galshaw, the ICA Congress in Galshaw is transformation. We said that theme back to 2017 but because of this pandemic, the transformation or some people say digital transformation become a buzzword and so everybody in our industry talked about transformation but what does the transformation mean to you? Sure, digital transformation is roughly speaking three stages. One is just digitization which is making sure that people who want to attend your event can do so over the internet, not necessarily face-to-face. So it's one extra modality. It doesn't necessarily take over the old modality but it makes sure that the new modality is as easy if not easier than the old modality. The second one is called optimization because once you have now redesigned your service to work with online people it doesn't really make sense for them to only do the same thing as the face-to-face people would do because online there's no restrictions of acoustics and physics. You can make sure for example when the keynote speaker is speaking it used to be that only people in the front row, in the front row view of the kind of nonverbal micro expressions in the speaker space but nowadays with virtual reality or even with just live streaming you can make sure that you shuffle people five at a time into this small room and each of them work with the digital double avatar of the keynote speaker and everybody enjoyed the same intimacy of the front row interaction and that could be done actually quite cheaply and it's been done for quite a few configurations even that I've seen musicals that after the fact invite the audience to take the position to step into the shoe one of the performance and then they can encounter what the performance have performed as a kind of first person perspective which is impossible to do in a face-to-face setting of course but it's actually not that hard to do on the virtual setting so that's called optimization and the third thing in addition to optimizing for everybody having a front row experience is innovation you can make sure that once this event is over it's not actually over you can reuse most of those materials in a way that's kind of a tailor-made experience for people who want to continue their learning front I just attended what we call a 7 on 7 at 7x7.no is a art exhibit where I had a conversation with artists and also making sure that each of our conversations recorded is turning to transcript and so on and then they fed all those transcripts of everything that I spoke do into a it's kind of hard to translate it's called a lottery poetry or it's a special thing so around here you would go to a sample you will bring your question and you will read your question quietly and then get this lottery poetry and just randomly draw a stick and a stick will contain a poetry that you can open and will answer your question and maybe you pay some money for the people in the temple to interpret that's poetry for you and so it's a consultation basically and so we recreated that experience in virtual reality so that people at any given time with any question about the topics that we have explored can bring that question and read a lottery poetry from the proceedings of prior previous meetings and then they can just zoom back into the conversation that we did have taken but if there are interpretations meaning that if that question is related to our conversation out of context way we can also do voice synthesis to make sure that my avatar speak something I've never said but will logically follow continuously from something that I have said and that's innovation because it's not just replaying from the first person's point of view it's not just replaying from the front row point of view this is actually synthesized avatar right okay and I don't have to like perform every time that people visit my digital twin performs for me okay that's the third level of transformation is enabling a new kind of interaction that nobody has thought possible but given the optimization result it actually become feasible to do okay thank you so much yeah I think under the the big thing of the transformation this time the conference is three meter pillar the first one is transparent in the open so would you like to give us some of your observation or your own data of course of course yeah I think in Taiwan the counter COVID effort was so successful because we're very transparent as I mentioned every day at 2 p.m the ccc answers every question that the journalist has and anyone who wants to hear the questions answer repeated again kind of like the lottery poach they they only have to dial one night to two which is a hotline right and they can just ask any question and if it has been answered before by the ccc press conferences the call center people have access to the same knowledge base and then can explain a much more patient's fashion to the person calling one i two two and that's transparency but also important is the accountability like the ability to give an explanation if people call and the ccc's knowledge base cannot answer that then it needs to be escalated to the ccc to be answered in next day's press conference and that accountability is very very important so for example back in april there was a young boy that call saying your rationing mask and all i get is pink medical mask i don't want to wear it to school because my classmate would laugh at me for a boy wearing pink uh what do i do do i you know uh try to go to school without a mask that will violate the ccc guideline and people in one attitude cannot answer that and so they just say will escalate to the ccc but the very next day everybody in the ccc press conference wore pink medical mask uh and so i think even minister chen shijong said pink panzer was his childhood hero and so the young boy become the most hit boy in the class because well only he has the color that the heroes wear and the heroes hero wear right so so what i'm trying to get it is that transparency coupled with accountability let's show that even when we make mistakes we can admit the mistakes while giving a competent answer just 24 hours afterwards and so this kind of competency then builds trustworthiness okay well okay so the other pillar is uh young anus yes and what what does young anus mean to you sure in taiwan we have this idea of reverse mentor so uh i'm old now i'm 39 you're young back when i was under 35 i was a reverse mentor to a cabinet member minister jekyll and saiyu ling uh in 2014 uh and at a time many cabinet members started working with people under 35 uh with uh what we call reverse mentorship meaning that the younger people uh show the direction of the country right uh so it could be open data it could be crowdsourcing and so on uh and then to cabinet members the older people make sure that they have the resource that they need to implement those new directions so nowadays i'm above 35 so i have my own reverse mentors all under 35 and the ministries of labor economy national boom council a lot of those ministries have nominated their own reverse mentors so all in all there's 25 people all under 35 uh and working very actively uh with the ministries in the cabinet and for example uh when huang weixiang um not even 30 years old when he entered the youth advisor council as a reverse mentor for the ministry of labor um petitioned basically in the uh youth council that uh the world skills competition winners uh need to go to the national day parade just like the olympic winners because we have a tradition of every year at our taiwan's national day uh the october 10th celebrates the recent winners of any majors or events uh and huang weixiang is like do you know that the world skills competition is also an olympic level competition so those skills champions also need to go to that national day events and so not only did he convince the minister of labor immediately invited her to uh russia i think uh where we won the third place internationally for world skills but actually all those world's good champions not only went to the national day parade but also then went back to the k212 curriculum classes uh to basically do place making community building and so on with the people in those middle schools and so for taiwanese in the middle schools nowadays those skilled um senior high is now not a secondary choice where you go when you cannot go to the academic uh high schools but rather they can work with their role models someone they can look up to those world skills champions and then do the place making and understand that uh working with skills education is a easier way for them to contribute to their community as opposed to the academic way so the other pillar of the transformation is young energy and what does the young energy mean to you and do you believe that young energy is the way to uh innovation yeah i think in taiwan we have this idea of reverse mentorship where the youth points the direction and then the older people give them the energy okay so i was personally a reverse mentor in 2014 uh i was the reverse mentor to the ministry japan side taiwanese and i was young back then 33 years old and so uh when she asked me to be her reverse mentor she explained it in the way that i just explained to you meaning that i will just draft out the directions like crowdsourcing open data and so on for the country but she will make sure that it's actually feasible realizable and gets the energy and resource to make it happen now i'm old of course 39 so i have my own reverse mentors but also more than 12 different ministries each have their own reverse mentors always under 35 to point the new direction for their ministry so just one example the ministry of labor have a reverse mentor the name is huangwei son when he joined not even 30 years out he proposed that in our national day parade which is every october 10th we already have the olympic athletes and so on the national parade like champions right to be applauded and he's like oh every year we also have this world skills competition it's like a olympics but for skilled people and so those champions also need to be on that parade and so he invites the ministry of labor to i think russia last year and then celebrated taiwan now i think the third place that year and so not only did the champions to go to the parade but also we change the regulations so that they can work always for example the k-12 middle schools and so on to show the young people their their role model those skilled people so that in taiwan those skilled people in the middle school have somebody they can look up to so they could convince their parents much more easily instead of you know having go to the academic senior high school and only go to this skilled high school if you cannot go to the academic high school kind of a second rate starting last year we promoted so that you actually have the first choice of going to the skilled high school to develop your skills to feedback to the community because the people in the middle school will already work with those champions on place making activities and making their communities better and making their schools better so that's a concrete idea by the young people and minister of labor gave the energy to the young people so the nation can go to a different and better direction well it's a very good example but how do you think about the education nowadays if you have an idea educational system in mind what they would be yeah it would be intergenerational it would be cross-discipline and it would also be global and that's how I learned right I dropped out of the middle school when I was just 15 years old and I told the head of the school at a time that I found this new thing called the war eye web that was 1996 while it was still very new and I found that people published their papers even before they go to the journals it's called a preprint server right and so on those preprint servers I just wrote emails to those researchers and they didn't know I was just 14 years old 15 so they wrote back and we start doing research together and so the head of my middle school after reading the email print out saw for a minute and she said okay from tomorrow on you don't have to go to school anymore you have a larger bigger global school and I will cover for you she said mean that she will fake the records so I don't get fined by the mid check medication right because it was compulsory and so I think just like computer science like the design schools those are of course people understand they could be taught and learn online now but more and more studies can be done online with the help of the extended reality and augmented reality so I think the disciplines and also the locality should not be a burden for someone who really are passionate in working with a research community or a learning community and nowadays with fiber optics everywhere including 5G technology and lower earth orbit satellites that's going to just bridge the last mile we can foresee a future where anyone who want to learn can integrate into a school but that school is very much decentralized and is everywhere and there is a trend now meaning industry according to some research by a German convention bureau is a lifelong learning that's right yeah but how do you see a lifelong learning for you know all the generation in the future yeah I think the as I mentioned in a reverse mentorship what's important is that both sides learn something the younger generation learn from the older generation the wisdom and know-how and the personal connections the red mind that they have to realize their ideas whereas the older generation learn about this global perspective on sustainability the SDGs the emphasis on climate change which wasn't there right 40 years ago in Taiwan we're very much linear economy 40 years ago right so this new attitude towards sustainability that's something the older generation can learn from the newer generation and the good ideas only comes to fruition when both generations can work very closely together thank you so much yeah so Audrey the last leader for this and I've heard about diversity I think the diversity means a lot if you know something you're right so of course I want to know from your perspective what you're talking about it's yeah of course yeah and this is when I get this mask out so yeah in Taiwan I think we really cherish diversity because there's more than 20 national languages in Taiwan now I think there's the 16 or more indigenous ones there's the Taiwanese sign language also a national language and of course there's the Taiwanese Hakka, Olo, Mandarin and also the mazu language and all these are national languages meaning that's the same history in Taiwan could be interpreted in more than 20 and that's the strength of our democracy because in each of those landscapes we can look at it and from a historical point of view from a variety of views they're like complementing each other's views into a truly trans-cultural republic and so we not only foster the cross-cultural conversations we also foster trans-cultural conversations meaning that if I learn a language like for me my native languages are Mandarin and Taiwanese Olo but if I learn Hakka or I learn one of the indigenous languages I get to view the early years of my own life but from a different perspective and that's called trans-culturalism and I think this makes democracy truly worthy because democracy is about everyone bringing a different voice if in a democracy only the dominant language can speak and nobody else can speak then it's not much of a democracy after all because it's much more authoritarian as compared to many ostensibly authoritarian regimes if in a so-called democracy only one dominant culture have their voice it might as well be authoritarian and that was the case 40 years ago in Taiwan right so we don't remember how bad it was in the martial law days right so we don't want to go back there and I think the identity of democracy and the identities of trans-culturalism in Taiwan is very much in their point yeah then we also heard about someone in the debate about sometimes when we have the diversity and the variety sometimes we're sacrificed but sometimes it's always so in this efficiency mm-hmm what do you think about that and that's that's what digital technology can really help yeah because it's true that if people in Taiwan order schools according to the national language act if they want to learn mathematics or learn the natural sciences in indigenous language and we have to provide it but we can't find at this moment so many teachers speaking say Sakilaya to all their different schools so right here actually in this very room we held the indigenous language virtual classrooms so there's a very proficient native language speaker of the indigenous language and before a I think a green room they just get all those kind of holographic projections of those indigenous lines to kind of surround in an immersive way that's class teacher and so people around Taiwan each and every one of them can just dial in into this virtual immersive experience of that particular indigenous culture and then learn together across the cultural and also across the transportational boundaries and so I think it really fostered an experience that not your culture is not only about what your neighbors are speaking but really what you identify with if you identify with multiple coaches in Taiwan then you get to join those virtual learning circles as enabled by digital technology and immersive technology so whereas it would be more efficient if everybody speak the same language face to face on digital technologies everybody can choose their own captions right so with the closed caption technology we're not saying like an online streaming service offering 20 different languages captions is inefficient because online there's no storage limit and it's not like you have to hire 20 interpreters to stand by and so if it could be done asynchronously with assistive intelligence and with minimal equipment each and every viewer's side then I think the efficiency argument no longer holds when we democratize the underlying technologies so I think you are really the heavy user for all the technology but I think I really also agree the the high-touch although it will be together with the high-touch right of course yeah I often say that ICT connects machine to machine which is important but digital connects people to people which is even more important yes it's fair too yeah so so at the end of the section would you like to give a device to a young generation because they are another young people they are they have kind of anxiety about the uncertainty for the future and also would you like to give an advice for the people who work in the meaning industry and the exhibition industry for the future development sure and it's the same message it's a quote from my favorite singer songwriter Lenny Kelwood and it speaks to everybody's perfectionism because when you're really good at something you tend to be shy about sharing unfinished work with other people you tend to just get it done like 99% 99.99% before sharing to people on the other hand in digital transformation especially we're going from optimization to innovation nobody know what the perfect offering looks like so it takes people of all the different experiences to co-imagine such a future and that brings people and people to gather and so the Lenny those I'm quoting now is from this song called Anthem it goes like this ring the bells that still can ring forget your perfect offering there is a crack a crack in everything and that's how the light gets in thank you for listening yeah I really like the quote thank you yeah right okay so this is very good should I still do the ending yeah sure why not okay yeah yeah okay okay sent you okay then thank you Andrew um sorry okay thank you Audrey I think we really enjoyed the conversation with you and your conversation really inspired us to our audience so we are looking forward to see you soon the major in percent or virtual yeah definitely so wear your mask wash your hands live long and prosper ah thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you


Welcome to Coverage Over Coffee, hosted by A.I. Mutual. I am Agent Ivory, and here we talk about various insurance topics in a fun and informative way that is easy to understand. Enjoy hot coffee and delicious pastries with like-minded people that are excited about creating generational wealth for their families. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share the channel. This is Agent Ivory. Welcome back to Coverage Over Coffee session. Today we will be discussing the will to get a will. Before we get started, make sure you have your favorite cup of coffee. Like, share, and subscribe to the channel. Also, please leave a comment. I actually enjoy reading and responding to them. All right, let's go. So the definition of a will. There's actually two definitions. We're going to start with the verb first and then the noun. And the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the will is defined in two ways. The verb used to express determination, insistence, persistence, or wolfiness. Example is I have made it in my mind to go and go I will. So in that particular description, I really love the words determination, persistence, and wolfiness. Okay? Now for the noun, it says a will is a legal document that tells what a person wants to have done with their property after their death. An example of a will is a document that says that a widow wants to have all her money and property equally divided between her children after her death. Now remembering what those definitions were, let's talk about Mr. Earl Nightingale. And he is going to describe to us the verb usage of the will. Earl Nightingale was an American radio speaker who dealt with subjects related to the human character and gave a great lesson, the power of will. I just recently came to know him and love listening to his lessons. I have put the YouTube link in the description of this video, so check them out. I'm thinking of the title of this coverage of a coffee session, The Will to Get a Will, and then this particular YouTube video came to mind. Lesson he teaches about the discovery of the will is important in energizing oneself to protect their family. The discovery of the will, he states, includes, the will is our central core of our being. It prioritizes what needs to be done and is persistent when faced with obstacles. Number three, he says we get to experience the satisfaction of using our will. We normally realize our will during a crisis. We do not yield, we move forward and stand strong in our convictions. Temptations do not get us off track. We realize that we are living subjects with the power to choose and bring about changes in oneself, others, and circumstances. I love this, right? Because, of course, having a physical will, you're doing just that. Having an active will gives us confidence, security, joy, and wholeness. He is so right about that. So let's continue. We have all heard of someone that we should, of course, have a will created for ourselves. But do we know why we should have a will created for ourselves? Or understand the repercussions of not having one? Today we will look at celebrity case studies that explain the need for a will. So first we're going to start with Chadwick Boseman, famous actor Chadwick Boseman, better known as Sechala in the movie Black Panther. He died and he did not have a will. Due to the fact that Boseman died without having a will in order, his estate had to pay significantly higher legal fees than if he had one. The docs reveal this state was valued at $3.8 million prior to the court fees. Boseman's estate will be split evenly between his widow, Taylor Simone, Ledward, and his parents, Leroy and Carolyn Boseman. So in this instance, he did not have a will, so of course, they had to go to court. And then they, of course, determined the outcome of such a verdict. Heath Ledger. So in this instance, we're going to talk about someone who did not update their will, because these are all the issues surrounding a will, either not having one or not having an up-to-date one. He did have a will when he passed in 2008, but it hadn't been updated since 2003, meaning his daughter Matilda and her mother, Michelle Williams, weren't included. Ledger's father assured the media that Matilda and Michelle would be well taken care of despite the outdated paperwork. So the good thing here is he has a wonderful father, right? His daughter has a great grandfather who's ensuring that she's going to be taken care of and along with her mother. But important items like this should be addressed in the will. So in this situation, even if you do have a will, you want to make sure that it's current, because as you see here, he has a daughter now.  Maybe we get married, we may get divorced, you know, we may acquire new property, we may sell a business. Just a whole lot of things may happen. So you want to make sure that your will is up to date. Michael Jackson, definitely one of my favorite artists. So in this case, the family members challenged the will. Arguably, the most famous case on the list is Michael Jackson. While Jackson did, in fact, have a will, it resulted in years of legal battles between his siblings and attorney John Bronca and music executive John McClane, who were named the executives of Jackson's estate. It was interesting because originally they thought he didn't have a will, right? And so his mom actually wanted to be the executive of the state. But then, of course, they did find this will, which named the attorney and music executive. So then they had to follow those guidelines. But of course, all the siblings still wanted to plead their case as well to his estate. So in this instance, you definitely want to make sure you have a will. Again, that's up to date. That addresses who you want to receive, what? Because if not, family members will definitely try to challenge the will. Other celebrities who did not have a will. Other celebrities that died with the hugest state, with no will in place, includes Aretha Franklin, Prince Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jimmy Hendricks, Tupac Shakur, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye and more.  You would think these individuals who have so much wealth and already would definitely have a will. I know these are celebrities that we're talking about here, but I'm sure we can also think of family, friends, neighbors, coworkers and church members that did not have a will in place at their time of death. Do we really want our name added to this list? Your family would already be suffering emotionally if you were to leave this earth. Why make them suffer legally and financially? According to caring.com, only 27.5% of black Americans have a will. That means there are 72.5% of families left protected. The result is that black Americans are missing out on the largest wealth transfer in history. Over the next 25 years, an estimated 68 trillion, that's trillion with the T. Yaw, will be transferred from U.S. households to heirs and charity according to consulting group Cerule Associates. Without a plan in place, probate costs could be three to 8% of the value of an estate. Families are also at risk of losing their ownership of land especially if you haven't prepared to pay the taxes and get the mortgage covered. Having a will in place can't protect your family from these and other challenges. So you want to make sure you have a will in place. So you're probably asking, Agent Ivory, how do I go about getting a will in place? Well, it's very simple and easy to do. And see, and that's one of the reasons why 70 plus percent of the people haven't gotten one they think is so complicated or they think is just celebrities. You have to have all this wealth. And I'm here to tell you that you do not. All you need to do is go to the website and Ivory dot we are legal shield dot com and sign up to become a member. Check out the will workshop video, which will walk you through step by step on how to fill out and submit the will questionnaire. Once in place, you are able to update it once annually free of charge. So thanks again for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you at the next coverage over coffee and always remember to aim high. At AI Mutual, we absolutely love coffee. You know what time it is time for this week's coffee shop spotlight. Today we are on site at Biddy and Bo's coffee shop in Waco, Texas. So very quick history about the coffee shop. The owners Amy and Ben Wright are the proud parents of four children. Two of them were born with autism and then two were born with Down syndrome. They created Biddy and Bo's to advocate for the value, acceptance and inclusion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The rights have dedicated their lives to making the world a better place for their children and others living with disabilities. Biddy and Bo's coffee has been featured on the Today Show. Rachel Ray, CNN, Harry. Good morning, America. Dr. Oz, HLN, People Magazine and Southern Living Magazine. The founder, Amy Wright, was even named 2017 CNN Hero of the Year. So I really enjoyed my experience there. The coffee shop is an amazing location next to the Brazos River. Although it looks small on the outside. Of course, when you walk up, it is super spacious in the inside. They even have a meeting room for their patrons to use, which I think is a plus. I purchased a decal sticker, but they also sell t-shirts, mugs and more. Great spot to visit as a tourist, take photos and purchase souvenirs. Of course, the coffee is delicious. Catch them at this time of the year for all of their seasonal holiday flavors. My favorite highlights of this cafe includes where is your home board? And it's pretty cool while you're waiting for your coffee. You can actually get one of those red pins and stick it on the wall where you're coming from. Souvenirs and gift baskets, meeting room and excellent location. I give Biddy and Bose five out of five stars. I highly recommend you check them out. This is an excellent cafe. Tell them AI Mutual referred you. Enjoy.


What is going on guys welcome to a new video. So today then I've got three awesome tips and tricks to show you guys to help you make more money on Facebook. So what we're going to be doing then is jumping into my ad manager account. I'm going to be showing you some of the ads I've ran in the past just so you can actually see the results they've produced and actually know that the things I talk about on this channel then I do actually implement them myself as well. As always though before we get into it I am giving away a free one-to-one call with myself on this video. All you've got to do then to enter the raffle is simply like the video and leave a comment down below and if you commented on my previous video then yesterday then make sure you stay tuned to the end where the winner will be announced. And that being said then guys thank you for tuning in I hope you enjoy the video and let's get straight into it. What's going on then guys so welcome to my ad manager account. Now a couple of things just to mention quickly that I feel like is important. This is an old account of mine so I'm not running any of these ads so I don't mind sharing absolutely everything with you guys just so you can see exactly what I've done in the past. Now I do still sell a couple of these products but I do it in a different way and I don't like to give out my current campaigns and the current ads that I'm currently running for obvious reasons because I do YouTube but because this is an old account then I have no problems at all showing you guys absolutely everything. So the first tip I want to show you then I'm just going to draw your attention to this first one which produced the most amount of money for me so I'm just going to open it up. In fact before we do that I'm just going to refresh the page because every time I do one of these videos somebody always says that you're not refreshing the page it could be fake but you can see I'm refreshing the page and it's the same result same numbers same everything. So I'm just going to click edit then edit this up and what I'm going to do is just click on this preview button here. We're going to go into Facebook posts with comments and that's just going to show you exactly what the ad will look like in your news feed so when you are creating ads if you do want to kind of like double check how everything will look then that's a great way to do it. So my first tip then is this little note here so you can see it's a carousel ad you can see it's a bracelet with lots of different charms and when it comes to building ads and the actual ad copy itself then it's not random everything you do needs to be there for a reason and if it's not if it's not valuable to the customer or if it's not doing something then there's no point having it there. So for example then just to kind of illustrate that the actual ad copy itself so the text there's hardly anything there but like I just said everything in there is there for a reason so lovely charm bracelets it tells people exactly what they are there's incentive there by offering 50% off another incentive by saying there's free delivery and then there's also kind of like a suggestion of who they can buy it for but my tip then my very first tip to show you is this here so PayPal welcome and this is very very important because because us as small businesses and new brands especially when you're starting out you might not have many followers on your social media platforms that can be off point for people and naturally people aren't going to trust you because you won't have that social proof but by saying straight away on the offset that you accept PayPal then that's telling them that you're a legit business and that you can't steal their money because people it's going to make someone has to really trust you if they're going to hand over their credit card details but if they can pay by PayPal then they don't mind because they know that if they're not happy with the product or if they don't receive it they can quite easily claim their money back so that's the first tip then and trust me simply having this little PayPal welcome or PayPal accepted within your ads is going to completely change it you will get more people clicking on them I can almost guarantee that another thing as well is that you want to try and this is kind of like I didn't plan to go through this next tip so I guess there's four tips and four tips in the video and the second one then is to create kind of like what's the word like interest within your customer or make them want to know more so for example I've put over 10 plus different charms available that gets people thinking what other charms are there and because there's only three or four in the ad it makes them want to click on the ad to see what other charms they're out and that's essentially the job of your Facebook ad your Facebook ads prime goal is to get people to click on it and go to your website so that's tip number one slash two hope you guys enjoyed it if you did then please do leave a like on the video and moving on to tip number two then which is I'm just going to shut this one out of the way it's this post here so you can see there's like a dog again I'm just going to open up the ad preview so you can see what it looks like on on a news feed and once this opens up so the second tip I want to show you if we just have a look at the comments section you can see that the page that I'm running it from is very active and when I say that that is actually me myself and I'm responding to pretty much absolutely every single person you can see anybody who leaves a comment I am responding back to them and that is a very good thing to do and again it will increase it will well it will decrease your cost per click significantly because you'll get so many more people clicking on your ad and again what it does is it shows a sign of trust with your customers if you're just an ad showing a product and you leave it up to people to just click on your ad then it's kind of like a cold ad if that makes sense but if they can see that the actual page itself is engaging with the customers and actually talking to people and it's a just the fact that you're active shows that you're a legit business and you're very much still alive and you care about your customers because you're answering their questions and believe me it will make a massive difference you'll see loads of other pages do it as well and you'll find that you can get an app or some sort of but I can't remember what it's called but it will automatically reply to people leaving basically just a link to the product page now I don't recommend doing that I do actually recommend taking the time to respond to everybody in a human way and actually answer their queries don't just spam them again going back to the point I made before every time you say something or post something make sure it's actually relevant and interesting to the customer and for those interested then I'm just going to play the ad quickly so you can see how dead simple it was I did a tutorial on my channel actually of how I actually created this ad and you can see really simple easy to do he's just simply the stock images of aliexpress by the way and it's just like a simple slideshow with some funky music in the background but you can see I ended up spending quite a bit of money on this ad nearly a million people reached and over 2000 shares so yeah that's point number two then which is respond to every single comment in a humane and personal way and build a relationship with the people in the comments because it will pay off I can almost guarantee it people will see it as a good thing which can only be a good thing for you and your business and your profitability and the third and final point then that I wanted to make and maybe even the most important one and that is if we just go back to my ad manager account in fact close this down you can see that I used the same post for all of my ads so you can see that the dog product is the same ad you can see that the bracelet is the same ad and the reason the sole reason for doing this then is to build up the engagement all on one post so you can see this one has quite a bit of engagement the dog ad did as well so 1800 comments nearly 6000 engagements and the reason you want to do this then comes back to social proof and building the trust with your essentially who sees your ad because if somebody sees an ad that has nearly 6000 engagements versus the exact same ad even from the exact same company but it only has say 10 or 20 engagements then they're naturally just going to trust that post that has more engagements people it kind of sounds bad but people like to follow other people so the more engagement and ad has them and the more comments than the safer people will feel actually trusting and ad and therefore clicking on it and therefore actually barn your product as well so the way you do that then is you put a post on your actual page so for example this is my kind of personal facebook page and all you do then is use you need the page post id so in fact I'll show you from the very beginning in fact I'm halfway through now so we're at the ad creation stage so we've chosen our campaign objective top left we've gone through the whole ad set the tag and everything so what you want to do this will be your default screen if you just click on use existing post you can select the page that you want to run it from and then what you want to do is click select post and it's going to come up with all the different posts but if it doesn't then what you can also do is click enter post id and that's going to allow you to put the post id in so you can use the exact same post now if it doesn't come up on then on this list then obviously you need the post id and to do this is that simple so if you just go to your page find the post that you want to use as your ad click on the three dots and then you want to click embed wait for this little pop up click on advanced settings and then you see this url of post and then it's posts forward slash and then there's like a number here so you just want to copy that go back to your ad manager and put it in there and then click submit and as you can see it's grabbed the actual post and therefore you can use the same post for every ad set and that way all the likes all the comments all the shares are going to build up on that one post and that will only be a good thing as well I've already mentioned it before but the more engagement the more comments more likes more shares a post has then the more people are willing to trust it click on it and therefore actually buy your product as well so that being said guys I think that's all three tips hopefully you guys are still watching the video I'm hopefully you enjoyed those three tips as well and please please please do go and implement these these will make a difference I can guarantee it and if you do then please do come back as well and let me know how you get on and that being said guys I'm going to wrap the video up thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed the video please hit that like button and if you want to be entered into the one-to-one call raffle if that makes sense then all you've got to do is leave a comment down below as well and that means that then let's get into announcing the winner from yesterday's video so here we are then on the previous video the two main reasons people fail at job shipping in 2019 if you haven't watched this video then I highly suggest you go and watch it because it's probably one of the best videos I've done actually it probably won't get as many views but I feel like the advice I've given it is very down to earth and real and will actually help a lot of people out so anyway 490 views 66 likes which is absolutely awesome so I'm just going to take the URL or head over to our random comment picker 49 unique comments in one single day is absolutely awesome in fact I think that might be a new record so thank you very much I really really do appreciate it and the winner then of this raffle is Lewis Gibbons as usual top job mate so thanks very much Lewis really appreciate it make sure you reach out then get me on instagram or facebook there's probably one of the two of the best ways and then we can get that call arranged and that means so then guys thank you for tuning in I hope you enjoyed the video if you didn't win this one then better luck next time make sure you do like this video leave a comment to be entered into tomorrow's draw and I'll see you guys in the next one


Welcome to Aloha United We Stand. I'm your host, Krasagin Aldo, and welcome to the Aloha United Way spotlight with its non-profit partners, the organizations, and people making a difference here in Hawaii. And you're watching us on ThinkTech Hawaii, and you can always join the conversation on Twitter at ThinkTechHI.  We're going to talk about young people, girls, victims. And sometimes this talk is uncomfortable, but you know what, we have to talk about this because it takes power from the people who are doing this, because power back to the victims. And these are people who are trying to help these victims, these girls recover and be part of society again. So today, I'm joined by Ho'Ola Napua, and I have Jody Eleon, and I have Tammy Batanga from the organization, and I'll have them introduce themselves, tell us about the work that you do, some of the background, and how you're addressing these issues. Hi, Jo, how are you today? Oh, great. Glad to be here. Thank you. So can you please talk about Ho'Ola Napua and what you're doing and how this started, please? Well, Ho'Ola Napua's mission is to help the victims of sex trafficking with health, education, advocacy, and reintegration into the community. And our original mission started with a plan to build a home for these girls. These young girls aged between 11 and 18 years old, and we're calling that home Pearl Haven. Pearl Haven. Yes. And Pearl Haven is a long-term residential care facility that will house these girls for at least a year where they'll receive complete holistic trauma therapy to help them heal from the experiences they had while they were being sex trafficked. Now, what stage is Pearl Haven at right now, Jo? Well, Pearl Haven is in the development phases, and we have been awarded a site from the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and the site is 12 acres on the North Shore, and there's a facility there. It's an older building that has fallen into disrepair to say the least, but it's 20,000 square feet. So it's ideally located because it's in a very healing space, and we will ultimately be able to renovate the home and accommodate 32 girls at one time. 32, and these would be 32 girls who have experienced something that's truly awful. It's something that, again, we... it's difficult to talk about, but it must be because these are human rights crimes. Let's not beat around the bush. These are crimes. These are people. These are our daughters out there. When did this organization start? And who makes it up? Are you part of a partnership, or what organizations are helping together or partnering? Well, this started as a concept and a dream of Jessica Munoz, who is our president and founder. In 2009, she started the Justice Project. She became aware of this while she was doing her master's degree in nursing, and she found out that sex trafficking was a huge problem in Hawaii, and she determined that she was going to do something about it. So she allied herself with a mainland organization for a couple of years and started the outreach and to raise awareness and to let people know and to find a way to build a place or to provide a home for some of these girls. In 2013, I joined the organization in 2012, and we decided that we needed to be a Hawaii-based 501C3. So we formed the organization, Huala Napua, and we're completely independently managed so we can show full fiscal accountability and be a local company. So that was 2013, and we've been extremely active in the educational outreach and awareness business since then, but with the purpose of ultimately building this home and raising the funds. What sort of outreach are you doing? Awareness. Tammy talked a little bit about that since that's her title. So Tammy, why just know how you're helping here? So with outreach, we go into schools, high schools. We've talked to over 4,000 children in the public and private schools.  So we get in there and just give them that awareness education. And we also do a lot of outreach with organizations, law enforcement, DHS, different organizations that are actually out there giving the services that are needed right now. We also do awareness coupled with fundraising. So that's a lot of the things that I do. I get to do a gala and an off tournament. And you had mentioned at the high school level, and is that the age that these people are targeting? And you had mentioned social media. So these are the, you know, that particular group of, what is it, 14 to 18 year olds? Is that something that they are really looking at? So right now we have, I don't know that we've gone into any middle schools, do you know, Jody? Yes, we've done a lot of middle school outreach. And the number is actually amped up because we did a lot more and it's now over 6,500 children. But we have to start in seventh and eighth grade because we've targeted very young, 11, 11 to 14 is the average age that the girls come into this. Very vulnerable, not really Akamai. This young teenage girl is very, if she has any insecurities in her life and a need for love, she's vulnerable to a trafficker who's out there looking for young girls to put into his stable and to introduce them to this world and to make him the most important person in her life and to provide the love that she's missing. So the young girls really need the education. And we had a training last week and from someone from the mainland, that's very proactive in this business. And they said we have to now start thinking about fifth and sixth grade. Fifth and sixth grade. Is this something that is what they're discovering worldwide or specifically here in Hawaii that now this age that you mentioned, like 11, and going younger, is that something we have to really look at? Yes. It's scary. That is scary. And you had mentioned, I think, Tammy, you mentioned some governmental agencies. How does law enforcement help? How does these organizations help? And how do you partner with them? So what it is for Hole in a Pool is that we will provide services for them after they've been recovered. But we need to know what we're looking for. So we need to know what does that look like? What does a sex trafficked girl look like? So when we're doing an assessment when a girl gets picked up on a drug charge or she's a runaway or she's got shoplifting or whatever kind of crime she may be picked up on, if you don't know what you're looking for and she could be a sex trafficked victim, that's what we help to bring that awareness to law enforcement and help them to identify these girls. So sometimes these crimes, whether it be shoplifting or theft, they can be hooked up. They can be also sex trafficking victims, but you need to know what you're looking for. Yeah. And that's the thing is that, no matter when you have an underage girl come into your custody, there should be an assessment. There should be the questions being asked. Did anyone ask you to sell yourself?    So those are the kind of questions that we have to be asking because sometimes they might not even realize that what's going on with them, that they're even being trafficked. So if they don't know they're being trafficked, how can they get services to help them recover from being trafficked? And you two have mentioned, I know, Jodi, this is a period of time in these girls' lives where they're vulnerable. They're still trying to figure out who they are and they might have someone who's powerful coming in and making them outlandish promises or using their power against them. When you do the identification, when they come to you, how do you folks help orient them and what are the things that we must know as people who are trying to help our girls recover? What must we know about them and how do we help them? I think the first thing to understand about this business is that it's very large. There's a lot of segments to this business and we are not actually in the recovery and rescue business and we don't have a short-term place to put them. We're looking at the long-term recovery of the girls' lives. So when we're working in the awareness and the education is to let people know what they can find. For instance, when I'm working in one of the large high schools here and bringing awareness to the school and they had a huge assembly, the counselors and the teachers clicked and said, oh, that's what's wrong with those girls. The behavior, when they talked about the behavior, they understood all of a sudden what was the problem with these girls. So that kind of awareness means that now they can step in and alert. There's a process now to alert either the FBI or social service agency or some of the advocates that are out there to find a way to get to these girls. And most of these girls aren't going to volunteer and come in and say, oh, I'm having a problem. So it's just at least a ways of awareness of the girl that's having a problem. And when she is ready to get help, there are places for her to go. And then chain ultimately. But when they do recover these girls, what we do offer is a mentoring program. And we've been very active mentoring and Tammy's a great mentor informally for several years now. And this year we decided to make a very formal program. And this is the Starfish Mentoring Program. Yes, it is. And that program is where we can bring help where someone's been identified and assessed, but there's nowhere to put them yet. So what we do is we offer trained, qualified, vetted volunteers who are non-professionals but are going to provide a non-judgmental friendship for the girls. We need to take a break. When we come back, I'd like to talk more. Let's talk more about the Starfish Program. The origins of that really interestingly named program. So right now, learn more about the other great shows and the other great hosts here on Think Tech Hawaii. Hi, I'm Stacey Hayashi with the Think Tech Hawaii show Stacey to the Rescue, highlighting some of Hawaii's issues. You can catch it at Think Tech Hawaii on Mondays at 11 a.m. Aloha, see you then. Hi, I'm Keely Akina, President of the Grass Root Institute. I'd love you to join us every week Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. for Ehana Kako. Let's work together. We report every week on the good things going on in our state as well as the better things that can go on in the future. We have guests covering everything from the economy, the government, and society. See you Mondays on Ehana Kako at 2 o'clock p.m. Until then, I'm Keely Akina. Aloha. Hello, my name is Crystal. Let me tell you my talk show. I'm all about health. It's healthy to talk about sex. It's healthy to talk about things that people don't talk about. It's healthy to discuss things that you think are unhealthy because you need to talk about it. So I welcome you to watch Quok Talk and engage in some provocative discussions on things that do relate to healthy issues and have a well-balanced attitude in life. Join me. Welcome back to Aloha United We Stand. I'm your host, Chris Aguinaldo. And today we're talking about sex trafficking, girls who are victims. But there's an organization here in Hawaii trying to help in recovering these girls, these victims of these crimes. Again, this is Aloha United We Stand and this is Ho'ola Napua. We have a couple of representatives from the organization talking about what they're planning to do to help our girls back to transition into society. And before the break, Joni, Tammy, we're talking about the Starfish Program, the Starfish Mentoring Program. That's an interesting name for a program. Can you let us know what it represents, what it means and why that's a wonderful symbol for helping our girls? So Starfish Mentorship Program came from a story about a little boy who was walking across the beach and there were millions of Starfish laying, dying on the beach. And he started throwing them back in the ocean, one by one by one. And this old man came by and he said, what are you doing? What are you doing picking up all those Starfish and throwing them back in? You can never make a difference in any of their lives. And the little boy picked up one and he threw it in. He said, well, I made a difference in that one. And that's where we are today because across the nation, there are thousands of girls that are being trafficked, underage girls that are being trafficked. In our own community, I would say there's hundreds of girls being trafficked. Here in Hawaii. Here in Hawaii that are undercover, that we don't know, that we can't see, that we haven't even touched on them yet, but they're there. And if we don't know what we're looking at, then we're not going to be able to see them. Tammy, I know that this is a cause really close to your heart. Could you let us know why you're so passionate about this? So personally, I didn't know that I was trafficked at age 15 when I was being trafficked. I didn't realize that that was what was going on with me because for one thing, we didn't use the term trafficked in the 70s or the 80s. It's a relatively new term.  And so I went in, went to the breakout session, listened, and I laughed and I was like, wow, unbelievable.  And so I went to the breakout session again and I was like, oh my gosh, they're still talking about it.  I decided to get involved and so I talked to them. And then one thing led to another and I got involved and I brought it to my community, showed a movie. Then it was like go to training. And then it was like, hey, you guys, this happened to me when I was 15 and everybody was like, what? And this is here in Hawaii? It was in Hawaii. It was in Waikiki. I was in the foster care system. So for lack of time, and you can read my story in numerous places, just Google it. But who would ever think that that would be the work that I get to do today based on that incident that happened to me back in the 70s. But I come out of the foster care system and so I got caught up in trafficking in Waikiki when I was 15 years old. But thankfully I have been a long journey of recovery. It didn't just happen. It took about 20 years for me to actually recover from that, just staying in the life back and forth in the game, not knowing who I was, not knowing my identity, not being empowered to do anything different. And so for me, that's why I stand today for these kids that don't have a voice yet because I want to empower them to have a voice for them to be able to say that they are valuable and that they can do anything that they want to do. They're very resilient. When you've been oppressed in a situation and you've had to survive through that situation, you become very resilient and you're very resourceful. And so these girls are very strong. But we need to give them the tools. We've got to remind them that you're there, that you're there, that we're all here together. Absolutely. How do they respond to that? I think I've read that at the time. You really didn't know what was happening to you. Yeah. I just thought I made a bad choice one day and found myself. Being trafficked doesn't mean you get taken out of state but I actually did get taken out of state. And so, yeah, I just realized one day that this was happening to me that I had made a bad choice. And so today when I meet up with the girls, because I do get to mentor them, it's not always a good experience for them to get taken out of that lifestyle. For them, sometimes they feel like they've just been removed and what else, what's better for them. But we can give them a hope. We can show them there is a better life for them. And that's part of the mentoring process. Yeah. But how many people are involved and how many of our girls are you helping? So right now we're just getting off, we're still training up mentors. So I can't really give you actual numbers. I would say we could say that we are mentoring just under 10 girls. That's all I could say. I can't really give an exact number. But that's like the starfish. These are 10 starfish that we've taken out. They are ours and our arms again. These are 10 people that are getting addressed in help. Now for the Pearl Haven. Again, let's talk about Pearl Haven. That's what, three dozen? 32. 32 girls can be part of that. We talked about the facility on the North Shore. What types of things, what types of activities, what kind of people can they meet once Pearl Haven is online? And when do you hope it will be there? The activities will be holistic activities. There will be education. We'll have on-site education. Whether we do it as a charter school or as a subject of the part of the DOE, we haven't quite decided exactly how. They will be schooling. They don't leave the sites full residential. We're going to have equine therapy. Oh, that's horses. Yeah. They love horses. Art therapy, music therapy, dance, group therapy, individual therapy, therapists will come there. So in most cases, especially as they first come in, they will be basically treated. Everything will be on-site. We'll have animals, puppies, goats, maybe goat therapy, it's supposed to be a good one, too. So the entire holistic scheme of healing will be addressed. We'll have doctors and physicians, doctors will be coming in and nurses will be available. So they'll be fully treated physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. So, and just the floor, we're still creating some of the things we want to do. We're going to have a greenhouse so they can learn how to grow and cook and do work things with the land. And we keep coming up with new things that we can do with them. How has the response been from the community? It's actually been very good. You've been meeting folks in the community? Yeah. And we've been actually fairly well funded from the standpoint that we've sustained for two years. We have a lot of skeleton staff, but we have enough to keep the organization going. And we've started our capital campaign and we just got a nice donation from one of the churches here. And Castle Foundation has been a supporter for two years. And we have a lot of people that have expressed a very keen interest in supporting us. And we pretty much have to prove that we can pull it off, that we can do it, that we can sustain it. So we have about a million dollars worth of county and state grants committed to us to start the facility and to do the engineering. We've got all the permits we need. All the land permits were done pro bono. So we're ready to go with the design and then to proceed with the building documents and construction. Next one. No. How can people help? What are you looking for? More folks to do this sort of volunteer work for you? What kind of services do you need? Financial donations? What would help you the most right now? I think, well, at this point, we're always actively recruiting volunteers. And I'm using our Tammy here. Don't worry. I'm making Jody talk. If you go on our website, you can sign up as a volunteer or a supporter. We have two campaigns. We have the capital campaign, which is for large donors who want to submit funds for the building. And we send people over to talk to them about it. And then we have a thousand from a thousand campaign, which we... Oh, ha! Good job. University of Hawaii football team under Rolovich is going to kick butt this season. In case you didn't understand me, University of Hawaii football team is going to kick butt under Rolovich this season. So be sure to follow us on Think Tech Hawaii and Yobachi Top. I'll be at every game. And remember, hello, ha! Hello. This is Martin de Spang. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is called Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. And it's going to be on Think Tech Hawaii from downtown Honolulu on Tuesday after noon's 5 p.m. And we're going to talk about to make architecture more inclusive on the islands, which is one of the definitions of humane, which is being tolerant of many people, of nature, of many other influences. So we're going to have some great guests, like today's guest, for example, my collaborator, David Rockwood, who is the author of the awesome manifestation of humane architecture in the background. So see you on Tuesdays, 5 p.m. I look forward to. Welcome back to Aloha, United We Stand. And Jodi, thank you so much.  So I really do thank Tammy for her time. And the time that you and I have left, we were talking about how wonderful it has been to have so many community supporters. There are people who have given you donations, pro bono services for Pearl Haven out in the North Shore, for this recovery home for 32 victims of sex trafficking. What other support can the community give? Do you need volunteers? Do you need more funding, or do you need more people to come in and talk? Well, we have a full volunteer roster, and what we really are asking people to do is go online and sign up. And when you sign up, you can indicate what area of interest you might want to volunteer in. And we're saying volunteer is what your core skill is. I'm a developer, I'm developing the site. We have accountants, we have graphic design people, database people. So there's a lot of opportunities, so just tell us what your skills are and what you want to do. When you go online, you can sign up for our Starfish Support Program, which is, it's not a thousand from a thousand, which is one of our midstream campaigns, which is a thousand dollars from a thousand organizations or people or whatever, a year. And that's kind of supporting the operations. We also have a $30 or $1 a day campaign, called our Starfish Campaign, where people can sign up and we're saying, then bring in five more of your friends, so build on it. So we have a lot of ways where people can contribute at different levels, whatever they're comfortable with. If people are interested in the capital campaign, we'll put them together with that team. But we are trying to keep our operating costs down, so when people can come in and contribute valuable services, it's fantastic, it really helps us. So we're going out to bid now for our engineering services to design the project, and we will be paying for that. But what we're saying to people, as we design the work, we'll be going out and saying this is what the building's going to need, furnishing fixtures and equipment, and perhaps they can donate or give us a discount on some of their things. And so we'll be looking for a lot of help, and our website will outline what that kind of, what is needed, how much pipe we're going to need, what are the physical needs of the plant. So there'll be a lot more coming up, and so staying online with us means you'll get the email, and you'll see periodically what we're looking for. So they can log in, and the website, it's been on our crawl. There's the website that they can check out. So please check out their website, and you can sign up again for newsletters. You can contact the staff, send an email and say, I can do this. Right. Can I help you out with this? Exactly, and we'll track it, and someone will get back. So we have a really good system of tracking with people that are interested in volunteering. We also do a lot of grants.  So small grants, large grants, whatever, and people say, oh, my company has a grant. People that are awarding grants want to know which one of their employees are interested in or involved in the organization. So we're always saying, we'll tell us what your organization has and how we can get involved with their grant program. So there's a lot of creative ways for people to get involved. And again, it's really, this is for the girls. This is for the girls. These are our daughters here. Absolutely. And again, it's something that we don't talk about a lot. It's something that sometimes you don't see. But having a home, this Pearl Haven through the Starfish program, it gives them a place to try to be themselves again, be themselves again. Come back to who they were. One of the hardest phone calls I took a couple of years ago was a father whose daughter had gotten involved with a boyfriend. And she'd run away from home twice. And he said, she's really good girl. We have a good family. There's nothing wrong here. But I know she's not going to stay home. I need a place to send her. That's the call we're trying to answer. And that is a need that we have here in Hawaii. That's a need. It crosses every socioeconomic group. That's the most important thing to understand. No one is immune from this. If you have a cell phone in your hand, you can be a target of a pamphlet. Jody, thank you again for your time. We've been talking with Ho'ola Ngapua about girls, sex trafficking here in Hawaii, but also this wonderful place called Pearl Haven that they hope to come online to help these victims adjust back to society. Please check out think tech Hawaii's website and our Twitter feed. We'll have a link to their website so you can learn how you can help them. And for think tech Hawaii and Aloha United Way, thank you for watching. Goodbye.