Hi everyone and welcome to the 2023 edition of the International Conference for Sustainable Development. We are thrilled to be back in person today and to have you joining us in New York. And welcome also all of our international audience that are tuning in online. We have a fantastic lineup for today and I'm going to start by thanking our sponsors who make this conference possible. So this would be the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, SDSN, the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, the Global Association of Masters of Development Practice Programs, the Kapucinski Development Lectures, Giti and Siemens Gamesa. We're really grateful for your support. Now it's my pleasure to be moderating today our first session, the Universities for SBG 13 Award Ceremony. Let me very briefly tell you about this award. So for the nine months prior, we've been working with students from five different countries in developing solutions for SBG 13. Partnering with Siemens Gamesa, we hand our networks from SDSN South Africa, SDSN Brazil, SDSN Germany, SDSN US and SDSN China Hub. We've worked with university students in developing solutions for SBG 13 that were interdisciplinary. These solutions have gone through a number of selections processes and for the last five months only five teams remain. Now these solutions have been evaluated through a number of criteria such as, for example, how aligned they were with the SBGs, how innovative they were, how practical and implementable they were. And for the last few months, the students have been working with mentors from Siemens Gamesa. This is a phenomenal experience because they've been, they've had access to world class professionals of the renewable energy sector to discuss things such as the technical aspects of their projects or what sectors should they be linking their project with, how to make them more applicable or even how to communicate about their project. So we have five teams left and today we will be announcing the final winner. Now before I do that, I do need to thank some of our colleagues that have been working tirelessly for the last few months. First of all, our partner Siemens Gamesa and I want to make a special shout out to Maximilian Schneebering who is here with us today. He's the head of sustainability at Siemens Gamesa as well as Rocío Millán who has been the project lead of this program and then tireless work with Marta Garcíaaro from our network team. I also want to thank the engineers and the staff at Siemens Gamesa who have spent their time working with these students and apparently have loved the experience themselves. And finally, I want to thank our networks and the universities that have participated in this program and have been working with their students, putting up a number of competitions, selecting the best projects and also participating in the evaluation committees. Now let me welcome to the stage, as I said, Maximilian Schneebering, the head of sustainability at Siemens Gamesa as well as Professor Sacks, president of SVSN, who are going to help me announce the award winning. Please join me. Good morning. I'm going to come out first. Just to say a few words. OK, you can. Excellent. So good morning, everybody, and also good morning to people online all over the world. We really live in a virtual world now, so it's very special that we are face to face with the people in the room for the first time in a number of years, but we know that people are also participating all over the world. And I wanted to just say a word about where we are in this great week of sustainable development. Yesterday there were the political leaders issuing a declaration recommitting to the sustainable development goals at midpoint. As you know, this week is the week of the UN General Assembly, so the opening high-level debate started yesterday, and in that context there was also a two-day meeting of leaders on the SDGs, a stock taking. The conclusion was on the one side, grim. We've lost a lot of time, obviously. The pandemic and the war and the fallout of the geopolitical tensions are very bad for the world. On the other hand, there is at least an attempt by world leaders to find a way back to some kind of cooperation. And we could see that even among the major powers yesterday, it wasn't a breakdown of the international system. It was a grudging acknowledgment that not an enthusiastic one, but a grudging one that we had better work together if we're going to solve the problem. So at the end of yesterday, a political declaration was issued recommitting to the sustainable development goals and recommitting to accelerating actions, specific actions, notably finance and engagement of the private sector. So this is very timely for us today because throughout today we'll be listening to world leaders in business, in politics, national leaders, multilateral organizations, and from all parts of society, we'll be seeing that there is a commitment and a readiness to lead. And now we have to get the work done. After seven years of insufficient progress, we need to speed up. One very good point that came out of yesterday's session is that the first speaker in the high-level debate after the Secretary General was President Lula of Brazil. And President Lula is not only a beloved and distinctive figure in the world who brought smiles across the chamber of the General Assembly and huge and warm applause, but also he is the president of the G20 in the 2024 cycle. And he committed in his remarks yesterday to carry through the breakthroughs for the SDGs, and that led to a rousing applause of world leaders around the world. So it was a very heartening moment. We have another heartening moment now because we have a great company, as you have heard from Maria, Siemens-Gamesa, which is one of the most important renewable energy companies in the world that has been partnering with SDSN for a couple of years. And we have a leader of Siemens-Gamesa coming out now, Maximilian. Thank you so much for being our partner. We're really grateful. And you have a mic also. That's great. Before we announce the winners, I wanted to ask you how you as perhaps the world's leading wind turbine producing company see the landscape right now. How are the winds blowing, both in your turbines and in the marketplace for renewable energy? Perfect. Thanks, Jeff, and thanks for having me today. Yeah, I mean, if we take a look back in the past and like 50 years ago, there were like around 70 catastrophic climate-related events recorded on a yearly basis. Things like severe flooding, seed waves, or like we take a look nowadays, then we can find that more than 300 of these events are recorded on a yearly basis. So basically our world is slowly dying if we continue with business as usual and we need a miracle to save it. So I got a little bit overwhelmed by my German nature then, and I was thinking, how could we plan for this miracle? And for us at Siemens-Gameta, it's pretty simple. It's driving a sustainable energy transition. And if you think about it, then you can see that investing into renewables, it's not a nice-to-have hobby. No, it's really a means to drive economic competitiveness going forward. And we've gone through massive developments in our industry when it comes to our environmental, social, and economic footprints. So costs have been reduced by more than 60% in the past decade. And once installed, wind turbines produce energy at marginal costs nowadays. And if you take a look at our carbon footprints, then it's comparable to the footprint of a truck. And if you take a look at the US, then there are like 30 million trucks registered here and we need like 50,000, 60,000 wind turbines to fuel the energy transition in the US. So the plan is sketched out, so we know what we need to do. But what we need to do to achieve it is a lot of talent. And that's why it's so important for us also to partner with the UNSDSN and create the challenge universities for Goal 13 because we need to jointly work together across the whole value chain and think end to end how can we drive forward greener technologies in the current setup. That's not only our industry, but also beyond the related industries when it comes to green steel, green hydrogen, all like. These will be the professionals later on working in the machine room to fuel the energy transition and make our today's promises the realities of tomorrow. And that's why partnering and inspiring the next generation via this challenge is really, really important to us. It's incredible. For us in SDSN, we're a network now of nearly 2,000. I don't know, your latest? 2,000 probably. 2,000 universities, think tanks, research laboratories around the world. So the chance to partner with you is really phenomenal because this is what graduate students need. This is students need the hands-on experience, the motivation, the connection with the world-leading companies, also the mentoring that your engineers are giving to these teams. So it's a great partnership. And I love it. And I think it's a role model also for other companies. So we're trying to encourage others to follow your lead. Well, thank you so much, both of you. I think we have a slide showing the five finalists. So here it is. These are the five projects that have reached this stage. So reducing carbon with carbon with students. Oh, we're moving on to a video. But yes, let's take a look at these by students from Shanghai Yangtong University, Hotbox developed by students from the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa, Gruniversity developed by students from the University of Göttingen in Germany, Amaze, Amazon Biomass Estimator by students from PUC Rio in Brazil, and EGORA, the energy marketplace created by students at Case Western Reserve University in the US. So we do have a video, I believe. I want to help fight the climate crisis. In the transition to renewable energy, the average consumer can and often is willing to be part of the solution. Nonetheless, entering the market is confusing, and there's a lack of easily accessible information about how to participate. Persons that start researching may find that their geographic location, budget, and even local policies will constrain their viable options. We have a problem with access to sustainable energy solutions. In the United States, many of us know about sustainable energy generation, but don't possess the knowledge on how to get started. We would like to introduce Jake. Jake wants to get into solar, but with so much information out there, Jake can get overwhelmed with all the options available for him. All he knows is that he wants to jump into the sustainable energy space and lower his utility bill while doing it. After doing some unclear research, Jake realizes that installing solar panels may not be as easy as he anticipated. Installing solar panels on his own roof is out of his budget. And in looking for a lower cost solution, he stumbles upon a long-term contract method called power purchasing agreements, or PPAs, which only serve very big customers, like corporations or cities. Jake is not alone in this. Like him, many people are interested in entering the sustainable energy space. For Jake, community solar as a renewable energy source might be the best option. In community solar, a large array of solar panels produces energy that is directed back to the grid and people can subscribe to the energy that is produced. Community solar has precedence in several states in the US and has been growing year over year for the last decade. But where can Jake find more information about community solar projects near him? How can he connect with like-minded individuals and those that know where to start? We present EGORA, a platform that bridges the gap between producers of renewable energy and new investors. On EGORA, Jake can choose who he works with. He finds a community solar project close to him that fits the budget and his community benefits from the green energy. He also shares a portion of this investment. Jake's project was also built in EGORA. EGORA allowed developers, landowners, solar installation companies, and financiers to connect and form partnerships that resulted in the project he chose. In this way, EGORA allows businesses and investors to collaborate on projects of several scales, from crowdfunding with your neighbors to making a large investment from your company. In current community solar models, the solar array and the electricity it produces often does not reach you. They can be states away, not impacting the energy profile of your local area. With EGORA, the community solar project is close to home. An EGORA user entering our website will be provided with the option to categorize themselves as someone just browsing projects, someone who wishes to contribute to a current or developing project, a new project owner, or a service provider. Each user will then be asked for input information specific to their role and provided with output information appropriate to their role. In the US, the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, was recently signed into law. New tax rules under the IRA allow for individual investors in a community solar array to receive tax benefits that have traditionally only been extended to developers. Using untapped sources of capital, such as crowdfunding, can extend the financial benefits of renewable energy to broader populations. And our state, Ohio, is primed to do just that. Just a few months ago, Ohio State representatives introduced House Bill 197, which will kickstart the community solar market in Ohio if it passes. We plan to take advantage of the burgeoning market by decreasing the downtime between each project's benchmarks, and EGORRA will take a portion of each full transaction that is facilitated by the platform. At the forefront of our project is a focus on SDG number seven, aiming to promote affordable and clean energy. In addition to this sustainable development goal, we recognize that EGORRA will have positive impacts on SDGs eight and nine, with improvements to the other goals seen here. Diversifying energy generation profiles across the globe has an additional purpose. Moving to clean energy allows regional and global economies to move away from fossil fuels, reduce their carbon footprint, and contribute to their own decarbonization goals. This is a direct positive contribution to the Climate Action Sustainable Development Goal, number 13. EGORRA wishes to contribute to the fight against climate change, while supporting the improvement in quality of life that an electrified world offers. An envelope to discover the winning solution, but I think we've learned it already. However, we do have a certificate, and I think we have a few of the students joining online, but let's just take a picture that we will share with them so that they can have their certificate. And so once again, Maximilian, please do the honors for us. Very good, yeah. You could see that this is really an innovative solution that also was very amazing for us to review and work together with the students to further develop, because energy transitions, it's something that we also need to drive decentrally in the communities, and getting access to the knowledge how to do it, it's not easy. So therefore, we proudly welcome now on the stage, representatives from the Case Western Reserve University to hand over the certificates. Oh, yes, please, come join us. Think you need to. Really delighted to see you give everything for the energy transition, also to get here, thank you. So, these are the certificates, congratulation, so. Sorry, let me give you the mic if you want to say a few words. Maybe we can go a little bit here. Okay, hi, everyone. So, first of all, I'd like to thank my mentors within the SDSN, Grant Goodrich, for helping me be here in person, which was, whew, kind of a run, but along with Grant Goodrich, I'd like to thank everyone at the Great Lakes Energy Institute who introduced us to the competition in the first place through something in our university called the Think Energy Fellowship, and they were instrumental in helping us get this project started. I'd also like to thank my fellow students who helped me with this project, and I think there were a couple more names under the acknowledgments who helped with kind of the proving grounds of this project in its early stages. So, yeah, that's everyone. Thank you, and congratulations. Oh, yes. All right, congratulations. Thank you. All right, Deb, we'll leave you here. Thank you very much, Maximilian. Thank you again, and thank you, Siemens Gamesa, for their support. And maybe last comment from my side. It was really brilliant to see the passion from the students. That's really the passion that we need also going forward to drive the change that is needed and to maybe make the miracle happen. And that's why I'm also so happy to announce that there will be another third edition of our universities for Gold 13. So looking really forward also for the next year. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh.


From DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com, I'm Darren Marlar and this is your Daily Dose of Weird News! This episode is brought to you by the audiobook Your Haunted Lives, True Tales of the Paranormal by G. Michael Vasey, a collection of creepy, often downright chilling, true experiences of the strange and weird that'll keep you looking over your shoulder. Here are a free sample and support Marlar House by downloading the audiobook for yourself at DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com. Following an interview by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones with activist and alleged former CIA clan Destined Services case officer Robert David Steele, NASA was forced over the holiday weekend to announce that it is not running a child slave colony on Mars. And thank goodness that story is not true! Man, I was worried about poor little Martian children there for a second. Damon Wayans set off some Twitter fireworks on the 4th of July, calling the day, quote, Happy White People Proud of Their Racist Ancestors Day, unquote. Well, you know, that will help me remember which of the Wayans is not the funny one. Don't skip breakfast, double up on it, download a protein shake an hour after your morning meal, and that could help cut your cravings, according to a study in the journal Appetite. Active men who chugged way protein, they saw their hunger subside immediately by as much as 65 percent, and the volume of the shake didn't matter. Those who consume 20, 40, 60, or 80 grams, they all ate the same number of calories at lunch. So apparently JRR Tolkien had it right when it came to the hobbits. First, there's breakfast, and then there's second breakfast. Kathy Griffin was recently interviewed by the Secret Service for over an hour. It would have been only a five-minute meeting, but Kathy couldn't stop telling jokes to the only captive audience she's had in weeks. The manhunt for an escaped prisoner in Germany was brief. The search began when Wardens went to check in on an inmate after he failed to show up for breakfast, only to find the bars of his cell window were sawed off and he was gone. The prisoner was found hiding in the prison's attic. So now, isn't this how you ended up in prison to begin with, buddy? You didn't think things through. Harold Hager was born on May 17, 1917. During his life, Harold served in the Navy during World War II. Afterward, he spent the next 37 years working at Cumming Glass Works. After his wife passed away in 2010, he couldn't just sit around, so he volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in Western New York State. And there, he does everything from sorting screws to testing life fixtures. And for the second year in a row, Harold volunteered more hours than anyone in the organization at a hundred years old. Yes, suddenly I am not feeling all that prideful about putting my shopping cart back correctly. A naked female motorist led Michigan cops on a 25-mile chase over the weekend. The 48-year-old woman, who is from Georgia, topped speeds of 100 miles an hour as she weaved in and out of traffic on I-75. State troopers ultimately forced the woman's vehicle into a utility pole and a ditch to get her to stop. On the plus side, Guinness World Records just verified she is now the fastest streaker in the world. Police in Minnesota had got the word out Tuesday, don't stop and take selfies with dead bears on the side of the road. The safety reminder was necessary after a dead black bear was lying on the side of a state highway and the authorities received multiple calls of cars stopping along the side of the road to take pictures with the carcass.  You deserve to be hit by a passing car or attacked by a zombie bear. The British Parliament has relaxed its dress code, making neckties now only optional. The theory is that if a fight breaks out, there will be fewer things that the politicians can use to choke their opponents. A 13-year-old girl told police that her 12-year-old schoolmate first asked her for a chicken McNugget while inside McDonald's in New York City's Harlem neighborhood recently. When she declined, the boy allegedly followed her to a subway station, whipped out a gun and held it to her head. Even at gunpoint, the teen refused to hand over even one chicken McNugget. The NYPD told the Daily News she knocked the gun away from the boy and told him to leave her alone. Police did not recover the gun, but numerous witnesses did report seeing it. The boy was charged as a juvenile with attempted robbery and will be prosecuted in family court.  Refusing to give up a chicken McNugget with a gun held to your head? If it was a McDonald's French fry, I could see that, but a McNugget? A woman in China was extremely distraught. So distraught, she threatened to jump off a building. She was distraught because she had exceeded her monthly smartphone data limit. Well, fortunately, she didn't jump. She went over her data limit because she had been watching soap operas on her phone which ate up the data. If anybody on this planet is in need of an intervention, it is this woman. A recent study by Microsoft revealed that the average person's attention span in this wild world of technology and social media is down to 8 seconds. A recent study by Microsoft revealed that the average person's attention span in this wild world of technology and social media is down to 8 seconds. Everm is a single episode of The Daily Dose of Weird News. Download the free Marlar House mobile app. In the app you can find links to my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, watch other Marlar House YouTube videos, sign up for the Marlar Sheet newsletter to automatically be registered for giveaways, purchase Daily Dose of Weird News t-shirts or mugs, download audiobooks I've narrated, see my latest blog posts and more. The Marlar House mobile app is free for iOS and Android users. You can download it now by clicking the mobile app tab at DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com or search for Marlar House in your phone app store. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up and be sure to subscribe if you want to see more. And click that little bell icon next to the subscribe button to be notified when I post new videos. And if you're already an official weirdo, please share this video on your own social media – Facebook, Twitter, Reddit – and help spread the weird news. Not even more weird news than I didn't have time for on the Facebook page at DailyDoseOfWeirdNews.com. I'm Darren Marlar and I'll see you next time, weirdos.


For women we are special, we have a superpower and that superpower we experience every month and we menstruate every month and we have to manage that in such a way, in a dignified way and we have to own it. My name is Mary Elizabeth Ramosia, I am from Solomon Islands. I am a consultant specifically doing menstrual health and hygiene. My mom is everything to me. Growing up I saw she's always committed to fighting for women's cause and women's voices in Solomon Islands. Actually those values I've learned from my mother. I do believe that relationship between a mother and a daughter is very significant. They can provide the right information so that the daughters can grow up well and they can experience a better life. You are raised by a powerful woman, you have some amazing things in your life. In Solomon Islands 85% of our total population live in the rural areas where there is a lack of access to menstrual pads. Women use leaves, coconut husks, sometimes they barely use anything, they use perhaps like rugs and dirty clothes. Girls who are at school, they didn't go to school at all, they have to stay in their homes. We have to come up with something that is more helpful, healthier and also will help all these women to manage their periods in a dignified way. So kids here at Calico, avoid the expensive cost to a village, we'll show you how for using three to five years. I decided to pursue this whole idea of starting a social enterprise, focusing basically on menstrual health. So the Calico Stay Free pad is made out of fabrics. It's an idea that was already developed by organisations that already spread the message of using reusable pad. It's just taking that design and converting it into something that suits our women and that's what I did. I'm Paul Hough, I'm a co-founder and director of Red Hat Impact, an organisation that works with impact enterprises across the Asia Pacific. Red Hat Impact got involved with Mary through our work for Pacific Rise and the Criterion Institute. For Mary the biggest challenge was really getting access to affordable and reliable supply of the materials that she needs to make reusable pads. So Mary and other enterprises working in the Pacific on producing the same products, they got together and worked out that if they could find a way to bulk purchase materials they could get more reliable supply. So in practical terms what it ended up looking like was nothing more complicated than us being able to purchase a single large order of two different types of material and have those shipped to a hub in Brisbane. Mary wanted this to be a transformative step for her business. It came at a very interesting time when we decided to really upscale and shift not only our production but our thinking of making a wider reach into communities. And so initially in 2020 I think that was one of the hardest times for us. I was very uncertain about the future of the production of Calico Stay Free. Through our networks with the Australian Government Programme called Pacific Rise we were fortunate enough to think through the opportunities and the processes to get in products from overseas into our country. We put all the groundwork in place to be able to mobilise quite quickly. So we got our stock into Australia before any major supply chain disruption started hitting Australia and then we've been able to ship pretty regularly out to the Pacific because we've got stock sitting in Brisbane. I think that was a huge answer to some of the problems we've faced in 2020. So the production continues despite COVID. A lot of women when it comes to things that are quite new or very bright they would just tore it away and so we decided to shift away from the colourful fabrics into using darker colours. But then I figured that it's also important to reinstate colours. We can teach women that it's okay to appreciate something that is new and it's okay to look good and to feel good, to be confident about yourself. We're using the right product. We go, wow, we've got it now, we've got fishing, we've got to teach the school now. Apart from producing the colourful pads, we advocate strongly that menstrual health will not go unnoticed. Women were initially hesitant to come forward. That kind of mindset, I've seen it very much prevalent in almost all the communities that I've worked in. People hardly talked about it openly, even women hardly talked about it and that's why the relationship between a mother and a daughter is such a powerful dynamic. If a mother and a daughter have that comfortable relationship, they can talk about it.  We all have a part to play making sure that menstrual health and hygiene is accepted. Two, three, go!


For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello everyone and welcome to the new issue of People's Health Dispatch. Today we are going to touch upon a very important point, something that we have covered before also in our bulletin, which is about the diagnostics of COVID-19. We all know the kind of inequality that exists and there has been a lot of noise about vaccine inequity. But diagnostics inequity is as big an issue and is as rampant across the world in the context of COVID. And if we see that Israel and Australia countries, rich countries are able to diagnose 10 people per thousand population of this, while the poorer nations such as Democratic Republic of Fango and Uganda and others, they can't test even one person per 10,000. And so what are the reasons that such inequality exists and what can we do about it? And what is the science of diagnostics which can inform us as to how to go about a more rational way of investing in diagnostics and making these tests available for everyone? When we talk about track, test and treat strategy to contain the pandemic, testing becomes a very important part. Today I have with me Dr. Satyajit Rath. Most of our audience is already quite familiar with him. We have had him before with us and he is a scientist and also somebody who has been very close to people, science movements and health movement. So we will be talking to him today. Welcome Satyajit and thanks again for joining us today. So shortly I would just like to begin by asking, what is the importance of diagnostics? And I'm asking this because about vaccines and therapeutics, there is a fair amount of understanding and we talk about it more often. But diagnosis is as important. So if we can shed some light from a public health point of view also it will be great. So let's start with diagnosing COVID-19 or the virus SARS-CoV-2 infection. And there are two layers to the significance of accurately and sensitively identifying if somebody is infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus and therefore has COVID-19 illness, whether it's a symptomatic mild morbidity or severe. At the individual level, it's important for people to know because the symptoms, particularly the initial symptoms, everybody knows a cough, fever perhaps, body ache, sometimes loss of the sense of smell and taste. These are all very general. So it's not as if symptoms alone tell you if you have this particular virus or not. At the individual level, why is it important for you to know whether you have this particular virus or not? Number one, for people with comorbidities, for elderly people, for people with substantial obesity, for people with substantial diabetes, high blood pressure, there is the possibility of developing severe illness a few days down the road. And it's important to know whether what you have is COVID infection or not. Secondly, it's also possible that you may not develop severe COVID-19 illness, but what you may develop is long COVID. And in order to know whether what you have eventually is long COVID or not, it's important to have had viral, virus diagnosis early on in illness. Thirdly, now that overall antiviral pills have become available, one that Merck has done the final development on, one that Pfizer has done development on, those medicines can be taken oral. And therefore, at least in principle, if you are diagnosed early to have the virus, you can start the medicine and we can talk about whether medicines are actually accessible or not separately. But at least in principle, you can start medication and you can reduce your chances of getting severe illness and you can help your community by remaining transmission capable for a much shorter period of time. That's at the individual level. At the community level, it's important for us to be able to track how much infection with the virus is happening and in order for us to be able to track it so that we can identify clusters and outbreaks, we can build precisely directed containment measures, we can design precisely targeted vaccination, drug treatment, hospital critical care related efforts to specific communities to specific neighborhoods. It's important to be able to track the virus. So from both a community point of view and from an individual point of view, it's absolutely critical for diagnostic testing to be able to detect footprints of the virus for the COVID pandemic. So this brings us to another important question which is about the kind of diagnostics, the science of diagnostics, because we all know we have been told constantly that RT-PCR is the golden standard for diagnosing COVID. But at the same time, it is a very laboratory based testing that can be done, a unique state of the art laboratory for that. And therefore it cannot be scaled up. And that brings us to then talking about rapid diagnostic testing. But can you explain more? And do you think the way we have gone about testing in the past two years was the only way to do the science of it? And there was no other way out. Okay. So in the first place, rather than talking about RT-PCR versus rapid tests, let's talk about what the crucial difference between two major methodological categories, method categories. One method category detects the RNA of the virus, the genetic code of the virus. The other major detection category detects viral protein. Now, virus particles come as little packages with an outside that is protein and the genetic code packaged inside. So you'd say you're either detecting the genetic code, which is RNA, or you're detecting the packaging, which is the protein. What's the difference? There is a major difference. The major difference is when you detect a protein, or when you detect the genetic code, you're trying to detect with very high sensitivity and with very high accuracy. Sensitivity means that you're detecting really, really small numbers of virus particles in the, in the phlegm, in the snot, in whatever, in, in fluids, body fluids. Specificity, accuracy means that you're actually detecting only this virus and not some other related virus. Both protein detection and genetic code detection is pretty specific. It's pretty accurate for SARS-CoV-2. There are, there are reservations that will come to the minute. But as far as sensitivity is concerned, here's the problem. How many particles can I detect if I'm using protein detection? And in, in order to detect protein, I need something that recognizes protein. We use antibodies for this. That's why it's, they are called rapid antigen testing because they bind to antibodies. The rapid antigen tests, antibody based tests can be amplified, but only to a certain extent. So the detection sensitivity of protein detection methods is less than the detection sensitivity of genetic code detection methods because the genetic code can be amplified to a much larger extent. And therefore, because the amplification capacities of protein detection versus RNA detection are quite different, RNA detection is more sensitive than protein detection. So if you and I had the choice, which one would we prefer, given that both of them are equally accurately specific, but one is more sensitive than the other, we would say we want the more sensitive one. The more sensitive one, which is the genetic code detection one depends currently for 80 plus percent of the diagnostics market on the, as you pointed out, the RT-PCR. The trouble with the RT-PCR is that it is dependent on the polymerase chain reaction and that particular piece of a biochemical process depends on very rapid heating and very rapid cooling scores of times 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 times in very quick succession in sort of one minute intervals. In order to do that, you need an electronically controlled rapid heating, rapid cooling block. That's why the instrument is called a thermal cycle, essentially a rapid quick heating, quick cooling, quick heating, quick cooling element. So the real question is, this instrument has to be available. All the electronic paraphernalia with computerized control has to be available and that's what you meant when you said that a, at least a secondary, if not a tertiary level laboratory resource has to be available for this testing, which means that decentralized point of care, scarce resource, community-based testing is simply possible for the RT-PCR. Can I build an antibody-based test that is available as point of care? Absolutely yes. A large number of lateral flow-based antigen testing, rapid antigen testing is that kind of testing. So here's the distinction. The antigen testing is available as point of care, but is not terribly sensitive. The RT-PCR is very sensitive, but is not available as decentralized community-based point of care testing. The really crucial question to ask is, is this a gap that cannot be bridged? And that's clearly not the case. Why am I saying this? Empirical evidence says that it is not the case. So let me give two quick examples from here, from India, where the genetic code of the virus, the RNA, can be identified using molecular biochemical technologies that do not require this rapid heating and cooling and therefore can actually be designed to provide a very much decentralized close to point of care test. One of those was developed, we're talking about 2020, was developed by a government of India funded institution in Delhi called the Institute for Genomics and Integrative Biology, IGIP. They called it Pelluda for a variety of reasons that we will not get into that are India specific cultural reasons. And that test is a test that doesn't depend on high-end instrumentation at its implementation. Exactly similarly at the other end of India, Intramandram in Kerala, again a government of India funded institution called the Sri Chitra Tirunal Institute of Medical Science and Technology developed yet another technology that again does not depend on rapid heating and cooling that identifies the RNA code of the virus with high sensitivity. And again that test was also supposed to have been transferred to the private market and to have become widely available. The crucial question to ask is who was manufacturing these, who was selling these, who was buying these. Are these technologies which are far more people friendly, which have been developed in people funded taxpayer money funded public science institutions? Why is the structure of the pandemic response configured in such a fashion that these have not become huge, large scale manufactured and prominently available? Why is it that RTPCRs more than a year after these technologies were transferred to manufacturing units? Why is it that RTPCRs are still the tests of choice? That's the crucial issue. I agree and wow I mean this sounds like something which could have been done like better testing with more specificity from the beginning or at least since the since late 2020 and we have not been able to do it. But that is a question that why would you say that is the case because we know the kind of work that was being done at the level of WHO, WHO brought out guidelines after guidelines where there was, we just know about RTPCR base testing. There has hardly been any discussion and even in ACTA, the ACT accelerator which is, which we were told in April 2020 that it is going to solve all inequities that can come up, which was quite anticipated during COVID-19, but it has completely failed. In ACTA, the one thing that we notice is there are different pillars and the diagnostic pillar has been able to attract funding only something like 8 to 10% of the total funding for the vaccine pillar. So clearly there is a problem in terms of focus, maybe also in terms of wanting to even diagnose the common population or the poorer population. Do you think so too? Well, let me put it slightly differently. Let me put it in terms of the perspective through which the global response to the COVID pandemic, but with particular reference to the global South, but not simply to the global South, also to marginalized communities in the global North has been configured and that entire configuration has been one of top-down decision-making and not simply top-down decision-making. It has an element of charity in it, which means that the great philanthropies, the foundations that shall not be named, which are major non-state actors in configuring these decisions, all of them tend to think in terms of the current structure where profit-making companies, biotech, pharma, instrument, company sectors, which all intersect with each other. Remember that diagnostic tests are not made necessarily by pharma companies alone, they're also made by other companies, but they are all part of an integrated sector, which is also integrated with health manufacturing, health instrumentation-related manufacturing technologies. And it's that complexly and seamlessly configured for-profit sector, which is taken as a given by both state and non-state funders when they are thinking about delivering what I'm calling charity to the global South. And therefore, what the way that this is configured is inevitably to say, we're going to have to deliver tests in large numbers. We are inevitably, we are going to deliver, of course, more tests to the global North than to the global South. We are going to try and reduce the gap, at least for appearances sake, but we are going to have to deliver quite a few tests, quite a few vaccines, quite a few everything to the global South at costs that are not high-profit costs. How can we offset the revenue loss? We can offset it by selling instruments to the global South with which these tests have to be done. And much of this is a complex spiderweb of trade-offs to try and minimize profit losses in what is an inevitable large-scale charity-driven response to the problem. And as a consequence of this, the overwhelming presence in the COVID diagnostic market still remains the certified, the familiar, the branded RDPCR tests with their affiliated technologies. Let me ask, let me add a final point to this of players and actors in this configuration. And those are the private sector healthcare delivery systems. The, I speak about Indian experiences, the private healthcare laboratories, diagnostic laboratories, which have been doing an India grade deal of diagnostic testing. And for them also, this is familiar territory, this complex web of pharma companies, diagnostic manufacturing companies, healthcare instrumentation manufacturing companies, and diagnostic laboratories on the ground at the secondary level in Townsend and so on and so forth. It's this complex web of the for-profit sector that is the dominant presence that's shaping the entirety of the response. It's no surprise that point of care tests, especially high sensitivity point of care tests have had no traction. So I think we all in India heard about failure that test so much because at one point everybody thought that is going to be the test in India because it was going to be cheap as well. And you're saying that there are other efforts also. We also know that in Malaysia as well, some similar testing has come up. Many organizations are actually calling for local production, local research, and then local production of diagnosis in primarily in the developing countries, beat Africa or Asia. There has been another strand where activists and organizations, civil society organizations have been asking the organizations or companies like CFIT to bring the price down of their test because the production cost is so low and they are just making a killing during the pandemic which is so unethical. Considering this entire landscape, what do you think should be the response of WHO ideally? We all know that WHO is the work now increasingly being determined by, as you said, philanthropies that shall not be named and other organizations, CFIT, FIND, and all of them. But what should they be doing? And I would again request you to put, shed some light as a scientist or in terms of science as to what can they look at and bring these tests into their pre-qualification the entire dossier so that others can start to use it. Well, certainly having a WHO imprimatur of approval helps credibility for any product that includes these tests. But frankly, the World Health Organization is essentially a coordinating office and it coordinates what's available and what its funders press it to coordinate. So it's no surprise that this combination of state and non-state actors that are functioning in what I'm pointing out is a configured for-profit web of the health, the industrial, and the healthcare delivery diagnostic sector is going to be focused on what they are focused on. My argument is that we in public health activism need to be demanding of our governments and we should be doing this this past year and a half. But in the era of emerging variant strains, there is still very much reason for us to be demanding much wider testing, much more agile, nimble, flexible testing, testing to be developed for sensitive yet decentralized point-of-care methodologies and for these to be taken out of the for-profit sector by using public health networks. All countries of the global south have some measure of public health networks. India's public health networks, for example, go all the way to the primary health centers, which have very basic elementary laboratories. Can we deliver reagent packages, chemical packages that allow primary health care centers to do testing at their levels? Can we make the research institutions that are publicly funded develop these? Can we use public health, public sector manufacturing facilities simply to put these packages together? Can we use in countries like India the wanted clinical epidemiological expertise in place for building a quality assurance quality control network for these entirely in the public health domain outside the for-profit network and deliver rapid nimble testing that's modified and tweaked as variants arise for large-scale tests to be available free to people everywhere on demand. That's really going to be, that's always been a crucial component that has been understated. That's always going to remain for the next few months as variants emerge and spread. That's going to remain the issue. One last point on that. Until now, we didn't even have oral antiviral drugs so that when people with 24 hours of symptoms, even if they felt battling against all the stigmatization that has happened, even if they felt like they would go get a test done, number one, tests haven't been available, but even if tests were available, what would they do with a positive test apart from self-isolation which is economically disabling for many people? Now, it is possible for us to say track, test and treat on a large scale has become feasible with oral antiviral drugs. Why are those drugs, and I come for the circle on this, why are those drugs not being manufactured under compulsory licensing in large amounts and being made available to the people? Why is that drug availability not being coupled to widespread decentralized point of care testing so that communities and individuals can be empowered to deal with their health individually and collectively in their communities? Thank you. Thank you, Satyajit. I think this was really good and not only in terms of learning about the science of diagnostics, but also understanding that how different everything is so interlinked that if you need diagnosis, you also need treatment and now that we have how important diagnosis becomes in itself. Thank you everyone for watching this and we will be bringing you more such in-depth interviews and as you know that we try to cover the political economy of health in our People's Health Dispatch and not just give you news. So keep coming back. Thank you so much.


Enjoy the program. Now, I am very pleased to introduce Katzenparadoxon and Pretoriana to you. These two are organized in the Decentral Association in Leipzig, East Germany, Saxonia. And they will be able to tell you what all that old hardware that is gathering probably in the shelf behind you could be used other than being discarded. And here for you is hardware for future with discarded, helping with non-used hardware. My name is Jan Fuchs and my name is Alexander and we would like to tell you how hardware that is being put out of use can be helped to make people participate in the digital society. It started with a simple idea, there are many unused computers gathering dust in cellars and companies actually paying money to dispose of these old pieces of hardware. On the other hand, which probably you can't imagine, there are people that do not have a computer at home, so there is a digital injustice. And these old devices are a great burden to the environment. In 2017, for example, the German Statistics Authority had a certain number of kilograms of electronic waste per person. So this position isn't really done in the correct way, it's 10 kilograms per person. Electronic waste was often exported and ends up in the so-called toxic city in Ghana. It all started at the 36th Congress, which is called Resource Extortion. And the city of Leipzig has an own authority, a digital authority was looking for a project partner to enable digital participation. And the whole thing was seen in the context of the climate emergency that was announced in that year. And this is where the Decentrale Association in Leipzig comes into play. We worked with the office in the city, but we are in workshops and events, and the technology surgery that we ran was becoming more and more popular. And we gathered information and collected some interested people. And in early April, the broad planning was completed and the name Hardware for Future was born. The intention was clear. There are too many households in the city of Leipzig that don't have the means to buy a computer and participate in the digital world, which is difficult conditions for homeschooling, for example, in the lockdown. So many people are falling through the digital safety net and we had to act, therefore, and started by redesigning our hack space. A storage place was found that we could redesign and it contained work areas, storage, just cleaned all up, put in a few LEDs, and that's all fine, right? Well, we needed an email address, we needed a few other things. And we needed to gather donations, which came during that year from the city's IT partner. Then we got some publicity in the city and then we knew we really have to get started. But there were things still missing. So let's take a breath and see what needs to be done. We just use a few open source programs that we know anyway and the flood of mail, how come it you with that? Of course, we need a ticket system for that. We know that from work. So we installed OS Ticket with every new email, a ticket was created and we can give standard responses from templates. So that gave us the opportunity to sort through the queries and find whether this is a donation or whether it's an announcement of a need. And we could then send some pre-made answers and save some effort. So quite involuntarily, we had created the main program for getting in contact with our donors and the other item was next cloud. We had to have a space to leave some data, such as inventory lists and several things. And in order to work on documents collaboratively, we also use only office because next cloud gathers an amazing amount of functions through plugins. We could also introduce element there, which is a client for the metrics messenger system. And that's something we had wanted anyway. And we then created several channels to discuss various issues such as deployment of an inventory. It also serves as a point of call for questions and for interested people that may want to join us. And with Corona, of course, schools have to become the focus, a very special focus. And through some publications, we got in touch with many responsible people in schools and we defined the objectives early on. We wanted to make reuse of hardware easier and we wanted to make it accessible for unexperienced users. And from the beginning, our focus was on company donations, which gave us a lot of similar devices, but also created a problem because many people wanted to give us donations during work hours. But if you have a place you can call and someone telling us, we will give you 50 PCs next tomorrow. That made us realize that we don't have enough space to collect more than a few laptops, perhaps. But we don't want to reject any donations either. So we opened a third collection point and while we're at it, of course, we can just use the whole of the hack space, we said. And that was what happened. Every space in the storage room was used for the vast amounts of stuff we had to store and things were piling up to the ceiling. And of course, if we hadn't had the pandemic, which meant that many events were passed, we would have had many more problems. We got private donations as well, but these are very varied and often very old. But we could collect these after work hours. Some gave us some very interesting accessories, mice with balls, disk drives, old SATA hard disks. One of the few, one of the many, just some of the many examples that one of our early problems, which you probably cannot imagine, was we didn't have any socket and any electricity cables because we need two of those for every old computer for the tower and for the monitor. So you may be thinking, what? Everyone has boxes of those at home. True, but we didn't have any left. So we actually had to get and buy some electricity cables, which fortunately is no longer necessary, have actually raised our storage. And at the beginning, we were thinking of using USB sticks with ISO images for Linux installation. Of course, put them in and that's it we thought. And we opted for Ubuntu 2004 LTS because we wanted to make it easy for new users to find solutions for the problems they may encounter. So plug in the USB stick, boot it, and after a few key presses and about 10 minutes time, the Linux was really, really installed on a computer that we could then give out. Of course, there were a few teeth and problems. We hardly had any queries about the operating system. What you get are some home made problems from keyboard layout when people modified their keyboard layout settings or their language settings, but we could solve those easily. The question for the starting password is very, very popular one, which we could always answer by saying, please look at the sticker that we put onto your computer because that's where the information is. But there were some curious questions. How can I install the Bluetooth software? I've downloaded all kinds of things already. And of course the user question is, has the internet been built into the device already? And then we have the one that should not be named Windows 10. There was a license updates. So there was a program that we installed to quickly update Firefox and others. And we had to write a PowerShell script to deal with some privacy issues, but it still takes a whole lot of time. After 45 minutes and a lot of manual work, we had ready to use version. So the second version of our USB stick was based on FAY, fully automatic installation. And that was quite satisfactory to us, despite some very small problems. As the name says, the installation is automatic. And this has been an issue at the topic at the Chemnitz Linux days, a lot of several events. And it's quite easy to use. And that got us through the worst problems. The only thing that was left was to boot the computer via the network. So we'll watch the installation process for FAI in the screen grab. A mini-live system is first booted via PXE and ends up directly in the RAM of the computer. You can then choose your profile. You have to confirm once to erase the data on the desk. And the program explains how the computer is going to be partitioned, the hard disk, what packages are going to be installed, and those things. And that was also our first solution for the language problem. And the standard, the defaults for the configuration was also reflected, giving us a German-based system with the German keyboard layout quite easily. The profile uses Ubuntu, installs Firefox, LibreOffice, and other common pieces of software. And thanks to these profiles, there are some other bits that we can add easily. And we can also, by using this network-based booting, avoid having to copy data onto USB sticks. So we have a Ubuntu without having to... It's always recent the Ubuntu we install, we don't have to install updates after the installation. Since we would normally install several computers at the same time, we introduced a cache for the data so that we wouldn't have to download it from Ubuntu all the time. And we had an apt proxy that we configured, so we can download new packages and store them in the cache, and for each new installation downloaded directly from the LAN, which has a nice side effect, which is that we can actually also run the installations offline. We had an instance where Jan's company donated a computer, and this was supposed to be upgraded by him and his colleagues without overburdening the guest's Wi-Fi. And that was quite easy to implement using this technology, so there were no delays. And six or seven computers can be installed at the same time, because the computers do the most work as they install the packages on their drives. So we are in quite good control of the installation process. And so we prepare the so-called sysprep image on a hard disk, which is a normal Windows installation, actually. This is for Windows, I guess. And that is then added to with some necessary drivers, and the Windows is then downloaded in the regular way and can be installed on new computers. And ultimately, the software used is Clonesillar. So we added this as a menu item in the PXE menu, which starts Clonesillar.  A single computer needs about five minutes to copy this, but if several computers are trying this at the same time, you have several hundreds of gigabytes going through the line. And that is the limiting factor. So we start the computers, see that the system is active, we have the licenses that we have to consider, and then we can run updates. And updates are the main disadvantage here, because we have to update the image that we install regularly in order to not have to install too many updates after the individual installations. We didn't have to install an extra VESU server, because that would have entailed other problems. Because we always have different computers, normally this kind of procedure is only really useful for larger donations from companies that gives us a larger number of identical devices. So how do the end users get their laptops? In the beginning we had an email address where people could contact us, and then we had a preliminary sorting, and we also asked them some questions to vet whether they really required a computer. And in case of cooperation with schools, the computers are delivered to the schools. We have already gotten and cleaned up and restored about 700 computers, which took a lot of work. And I would estimate that for one computer, all in all, all efforts included all the bureaucratics and everything, we have about one hour that we put into each device. So that was 700 hours of work. So that means 20 hours per work, all voluntary, all done by volunteers who do that on top of their day jobs and their familial engagements. So what did we learn from all of this? We learned that it is indeed a lot of work, so we are always still looking for ways to delegate efforts. For example, the distribution. We are always getting new requests, so we're really glad to see that there are similar projects in other cities, for example in Halle. We don't have problems updating and restoring normal systems, but the space really is a problem because many people need to work at the same time and not get in each other's way. And this is a very good project where you can also motivate companies to take part and to put in effort. But not all of our expectations could be matched. Reality just hits differently because many people don't have internet at home. So we usually ask people whether the computer is next to the router if they need a LAN cable or whether they need a router. One participant said, for example, that they only use internet on their phone or some people even don't use email. Some people were not aware that they'd just sent an email because they were missing the green check marks. Also, reference lines are an unknown thing for some people. Sometimes we get the whole message in the reference line or we get emails without reference lines. So sometimes we get emails with donation in the reference line and we don't know whether it's a donation that is going towards us or that they want us to donate hardware to them. And also without open source we wouldn't have been able to pull all of this through even if it requires many efforts. And we would rather spend money on Wi-Fi adapters rather than proprietary software. And also we're very grateful to have our volunteers who do so much work whether it be physical hauling computers from place to place or virtual checking tickets. And we need all of those contributions for the whole project to be a success. What do we want in the future? Blooming landscapes, of course, but we don't know concretely how much of that we can realize. We would like to offer workshops for people how to use computers. And when doing that we could also do crypto parties. We would like to get a better connection to our partners. For example, we could create a chat channel on the device where the community can help themselves. And of course we would like to get into schools more and enable digital participation and actively promote it. But before we get to that, a very simple organizational topic, our inventory. We want to have a new inventory system that allows us to track our devices better to see how many devices we've already installed and how many of those actually show up in the system while installing. And we don't want to have to update Excel sheets manually. And of course we're also very interested in secure hard disk deletion and to optimize that. That would be very useful for us, especially to take away the worries of our donators. We're working on a script but it isn't finalized yet. And the question is also whether that is possible because deleting hard disks is a very time-intensive and labor-intensive thing. And also we would like to do the windows image installation in the same step. And then we have the problem that not everyone has internet. And of course that would call for participation with Freifunk. Leipzig used to have a huge Freifunk community. Why not use that approach to enable more free internet for everyone? So that was it from our short introduction. Thank you for listening. And we're happy to receive hardware donations from whomever it may be. Thank you. Katzen, Paradox am and Pretoriana. Thank you very much for your presentation and your stories from the trenches of empowerment and technological enablement. We still have some time left for Q&A. So call for participation for anyone watching the stream. Post your questions into the chat and we'll try to answer them. I would like to start with the first question from the pad, which is how do you prevent in such a project self-exploitation? Well, self-exploitation is a very hard word. We knew that when we launched this project that it is a very important ecological topic. But also corona came on top. And digital injustice is very much exacerbated by the corona virus crisis. Of course, at the beginning, especially we invested much more time than would have been sensible. But the issue is just so pressing and important. And also a lot of people were motivated to help out so that we could put the load on more shoulders. And now we're also getting support from authorities and public organizations. Okay, we're seeing more and more questions. That's a very good thing. Next question. Regarding going to schools, there is also the Chaos macht Schule, chaos at school team in Germany and Austria. What is the difference to your efforts? Yeah, of course we have the chaos at school team. But us in Leipzig were very local. We went to local schools from the beginning. And started a collaboration and it's become more important to us the whole school thing because of corona. It made it very difficult to personally hand over the hardware. So, that is why we want to do it more in the future. Be more visible at school, involve teachers, social workers and so on in order to enable a decentral distribution of hardware. And you have to say it's different from school to school. It depends on the people involved. It depends on whether you find an interested and engaged teacher or principal and in the end communication is key. And personal contact is very important to build and maintain those personal relationships. So, it's not a one size fits all approach. You have to find individual ways to approach different schools. But that's also a good thing because we can distribute many computers to schools. Now we're getting a few technical questions. Most computers delivered with or without SSD and how do you get replacements? Most computers from companies are pretty complete and up to date. So, they're about three, four or five years old. But many computers still have outdated hard disks. We had computers with SSD, especially from private donors. That was almost always the case. SSDs help us and companies because they secure ways of deleting them. So, you don't have to overwrite them several times. You can put crypto on that so that the data will not be legible afterwards. Sometimes they also get computers without hard disks. And we buy SSDs in bulk, about 180 GB. And that is financed by support by the city and private donations. We would prefer saving a laptop that doesn't have a hard drive, a hard disk, rather than letting it go to waste. So, how can one send you things if you don't live? How if one does not live in Leipzig, Germany? Well, the best thing would be to build up a project locally yourself, rather than sending us things. In many cities, there is a need or an interest to support us. But what would be best is if people on the ground would be looking. What makespaces do I have in my area? Which companies are there that may be working in this field? And what perhaps like to start a project? But alternatively, if you are in the region, perhaps you could arrange to meet us. In corona times, it's of course not easy, not really possible to just drop in. And yes, you could also hand in your devices then. But we only work locally in Leipzig and surroundings. There are some larger organizations that approach this at a larger scale. Computer tours, one that didn't get the other one. And on their website, you find nice maps telling you where you can donate your devices locally without having to send them all the way to us. And there will be a talk in this divock as well from them. And that gets me to now give you two questions packed into one. How can you get organized, form gangs? So the question is, are you considering cooperating with similar projects? And how could a corporation be shaped? And I'll add to that the question, we are thinking about starting a similar project in our region. Could you help us building up such a project? Or do you help building up similar projects? We'd like to help if there are questions, technological support, or exchanging experiences about early mistakes. Computer tour and Realtor, these two offer help as well. So you can ask them as well. We haven't built up a repository of helpful information yet regarding cooperation. If people offer donations to us that are not really resource effective because they're not nearby, we are referring those to these other organizations. And there was an idea together with Computer Tour that two to four or more various organizations that work in this field should get together and form a round table to talk across Germany about how we can bundle our resources better. Locally, we are quite well networked, be it with the Computer Tour in Chemnitz or a project in Halle, which is quite nearby. So from the beginning, we have been able to give support. If you do have questions, come to us, write an email we could arrange to meet and tell you how we struggled at the beginning. And we do like to help with debugging the Ansible playbooks that you may be using. We have been able to get things running reasonably well. And I can add the next question directly, the one that came in last. How can people reach you best to get into contact? Well, the best way would be really to use the distance holo matrix server. We have a hard way for future channel, but you can use email, which would go through the usual ticket system then before it reaches us. So it may take a bit longer to be responded to. And should Corona at some point be more or less over, you are welcome to visit us once we are more or less safe from Corona. Okay, I'll now summarize two more questions into one. And one is regarding the talk, how did you get to cooperate with the municipality of Leipzig and how did companies become aware of you as well? Are these companies look, do they look for organizations? How do they find you? The city of Leipzig approached us at the Chaos Communication Congress in 2019, the 36 C3 saying that they wanted to do something for sustainability. And from that, the idea grew that digital participation should be furthered and that led to the hard way for future projects. We were very lucky there. And as we said in the talk, we have this office for digital cooperation in Leipzig, which gave us a lot of support financially but through contacts as well and for reaching the first companies too. Because the IT service provider for the city of Leipzig was able to donate and they were more flexible than others. And they were told, yeah, let's do something. And then other companies that become aware of us, well, we try to reach them to various channels, be it through personally, through people that we get in touch with as donors and ask that they talk with their employers. We have IT departments and we tell them that there are better ways to safely donate devices other than discarding them in the waste. So that is the message. It is possible to donate devices without disregarding data protection or privacy completely. We give help and tools that are cheap to use. And we don't have to have the admin working on the device and overriding the hard disk for 30 days or something and preferring them to just throw it away. There are ways to take care of these issues as the device is dislocated from the first place where it is. Just change the BitLocker encryption key or use some old number of Linux scripts that deal with the SSD and erase it safely. Interesting. Right. Here is the next question, which is something very different. Do the tax authorities want you to declare stuff, even if everything is free of cost? We try to the best of our conscience to work as safely as possible. We are a registered charity. We receive donations, which we have to give receipts for. And then we have to prove that the people that are given devices from us are in real need. So we have the IT office of the city on our back there or taking care of us there. Otherwise, we would have to apply all kinds of tests to make sure that that is the case. But luckily, through the city, we don't have to do this. We try to be as safe as possible because the charity stages of our hack space cannot be endangered through this. And also it has to be said, through these private donations, they are not really regulated. And that gives us an opportunity to supply people that may just fall out of the system for state support. So we have a bit of room for maneuver here with the private donations. And we are able to supply these people as well. Those that may be just above the limits for needing support from the state or being eligible for support from the state. So that's interesting how you get these things done. I can't see any further questions. Hang on. And then I would like to just thank someone from Halle, the people that produced the video with us. Thank you, Milo, from EPK in Halle. And a closing statement, perhaps. Something that you may want to tell those in the stream. If you have more questions at 6, after this there will be a big blue button session. You'll find the link in the pad. Otherwise, we have a website, dezentrale.space. Dezentrale being the German spelling for decentral. We have hardware for future.de. Our website that gives you information. Regularly talk to your IT department or if you are working in an IT department. Think about what you do with your old hardware. Could you donate infrastructure to Freifunk communities? Could you give computers maybe without the hard disk if necessary? I think companies say, okay, we'll give the old device together with the small financial contribution to save these devices from being put to waste. And digital injustice does exist out there. And due to corona and through donations to schools, that hasn't really helped much. And we are really, really happy to be able to work in this and we have put a lot of passion for this. We're giving all these devices and we get them ready and we give them out. And if we can continue like this, even then, all over Leipzig, we can't even reach a small percentage of the people that are in real need. So it's very, very important to have this kind of work going on all over Germany and more devices being donated and all that. That is very important. Okay. Thank you for that closing statement and the talk. And of course, thank you for your work. So Katzen, Paradoxon, Prateriana. Thank you. And if you want to keep in touch and talk more, join the big blue button session in five minutes. The link is in the pad, the one that you used for the questions. And enjoy the further discussion and keep giving people digital access. Thank you.


If you're looking for one-to-one business coaching or mentoring, I hope that this video will provide an alternative to consider that might be an even better fit for you. So one-to-one business mentoring and coaching is where you work one-to-one privately with an expert in business and marketing to help you clarify the message of your business to give you the right strategy to grow your business to troubleshoot any challenges and problems that come up as you build your business. And that makes sense. And it's a service that I've provided intensively for several years, working with lots and lots of different entrepreneurs and small business owners. And the thing is when you do one-to-one business coaching or mentoring, you're getting a lot of input from just one expert, one person. And you kind of trust this person to give you the best advice, et cetera. But what if business doesn't really work like that? I mean, what if business isn't really just one person's advice, one person's feedback, isn't always the most strategic or the most market-driven feedback that you can get. So a couple of years ago, I started developing a group program and I have been intensively honing it for the past three years. And I'm proud to be relaunching it for the 2020 year. And I wanna tell you about this group program because some of you might be interested if you're interested in working with me personally, this is what I would recommend to you instead. But whether you work with my group program or somebody else's, I would encourage you to consider a hybrid group and one-to-one program if you can find one. Because I've seen over the past few years that that's really, it's probably the most strategic and most efficient way to provide support to somebody who's growing their business and the person who's receiving this kind of support gets the best of both worlds. You get the best of one-to-one, which is you still get the private support and accountability from one mentor and one expert. But you also get the dynamic diversity of feedback and support from a community of peers. So it's a really nice balance. And so in my group program, this is what you would be getting and I'm just gonna kind of read it out to you and please feel free to comment below if you have any questions, if you have any comments, I'd love to see it. So you get a couple of things and I'm just gonna go ahead and I provide so much of my group program. I'm gonna go ahead and read this out to you. So first of all, a thing, a really important difference between one-to-one work with a business expert versus a group program is that there is a big price difference, right? So a one-to-one expert might charge you anywhere between $300 a month to $1,000 a month for one-to-one support. And that's reasonable, right? Because you meet with that person privately, you're taking a lot of their time, et cetera. With a group program, instead of paying $300 to $1,000 a month, you usually pay a lot less than that. And my group program is only $150 a month. So it's half of the minimum you would pay for one-to-one business coaching or mentor. So here's what you get in my group program and it's something that I recommend you look for in other group programs that you are considering as well. So you get a private mastermind call and in my group, it's every week. You get accountability, you get to celebrate your progress, you get to share about your learnings and get the learnings from other people as well. So private mastermind group, private mastermind call every week, you also get a private group Q&A or I call it business clinic every week with me. It's a group call. But so in my group program, there are two group calls a week. Both are optional. Of course, they're all recorded. So if you don't want to attend or can't attend, you can always catch up anytime you want if you want to. So two group calls a week. One is a mastermind format and the second one is a Q&A or business clinic format where you get to come and share your challenge for the moment issues and get both my coaching and mentoring to support a feedback and ideas from your fellow group peers as well. So two calls a week that are private just to the group. You also get unlimited support through our private Facebook group. So we have a secret Facebook group just for the members of the group program and you can post your questions, as many questions and request for feedback as you want. So it's unlimited support. And of course you get the feedback from me. I check the group every weekday and answer questions, all the questions I answer. But you also get the feedback from your peers. And of course I vet the group carefully. So it's smart people who are building an authentic business who share our values of authenticity and kindness and joyful productivity rather than hustle and growing a business. So it's a very thoughtful and kind and supportive and spiritual community. So that's unlimited support through the private Facebook group. You also get my tracking of your business progress continuously. So in the group, I have a spreadsheet that you can copy which has various columns to help you track the most important actions in growing an authentic business. And I keep track of your spreadsheet every single week. The spreadsheet is optional. You don't have to track it every week but I do check every week people's spreadsheets and I pay attention to it if there's any challenges or questions. I respond to that but I'm definitely tracking your progress ongoingly. So that's the fourth benefit. The fifth benefit is you get access to every single one of my online courses. So instead of paying $75 to $100 every single month that's already included in the group program. So you get and it's organized access. It's all in the group. You get to go into the library and it's all organized by a recommended order of things and you could skip around if you want but it's all there for you. All the links, all the videos, all the documents are all there for you in the library. It's organized, it's all complimentary as part of as one of the group members. So that's a really big benefit. It's a fifth benefit. Sixth benefit is that you get a one-to-one private call with me every two months as a kind of a strategy check-in. It's just checking in because you get so much access to me in the group. It's unlimited access anyway. You get all the access, but you also get a one-to-one private call with me every two months to check in. How is your strategy going? How is your trajectory of your business going? So we kind of look at the big picture. A seventh benefit is you really, it's a group where you can really be honest about where you're at with things. You can be honest about your challenges. And it's really rare to find a group of kindred spirits where you can feel comfortable being honest about your challenges. And also to honest about your progress, to celebrate your progress and about your learnings. And you get so much benefit from also seeing other people share their challenges and their celebrations and their progress and their learnings. And it's just a really a lot of the people in my group say that the best part of the group is really the community that I've created, the quality of people that are in the group. So if you're interested in working with me, I think you'll really be excited about the peers that you're gonna meet in the group. Friendships form, accountability buddies form, referral partnerships form, and just overall it's an ongoing place where you can be yourself. You can really, and people even share the challenges in their personal life and get supported there too. So it's a really valuable place to kind of, let your hair down, so to speak and be yourself and be supported and be encouraged. So I wish I had a place like that. That's why I created this kind of thing. So whether you decide to check out my group or whether you check out other people's groups, you know, my peers all have their groups as well. You know, Tad Hargrave has a wonderful mentoring group. You might wanna check out marketingforhippies.com. Paul Zelzer has, creates mastermind groups as well. Mark Silver has a wonderful community and others. So I just mentioned those because they share my values very closely, but there are other, you know, business mentors who also have their own group programs. So you might wanna check that out as well. So whether you know, check mine out or someone else's, I really encourage you to look at, closely look at a group program as an alternative to doing one-to-one business coaching mentoring because especially if you can get both one-to-one and group together, it's sort of you get the best of both worlds. So be a smart shopper in how you're getting supported in your business growth. And you know, if my group sounds exciting to you, I hope that you'll check it out. Right now I'm recording this in the middle of November. So I'm just opening up enrollment for the 2020 year. And most of the spots in the group, and I should clarify it's, my group has a maximum of 50 members, five zero, 50 members. And it was 50 members in 2019 this year. And I found that it was a really good balance. 50 members is enough people where you get the diversity of feedback and support and partnerships and resources, right? From enough people there. Cause you want enough people to get the diversity of resources and support and personality matches and things like that. But it's not so many people. It's small enough where I can still personally track everyone, you know, with the spreadsheet or with my one-to-one calls and with ongoing support in that way. So yeah, so just want to let you know that. So most of the 50 spots in my 2020 group have already been spoken for because a lot of people are renewing from this year. But there is, there are still spots left. There's, I think there's about 15 spots left. So if you want to apply, I'd recommend that you apply as soon as possible. I'm going to be reviewing your applications and making decisions for the open spots in early December. You should hear back from me. So the earlier apply, I may be able to get back to you sooner, but certainly by early December. All right, so since this is a Facebook Live video right now, I'm going to go ahead and see if there are any questions for me to answer, but go ahead, I'm going to give you a moment to comment below with any questions or any comments. Okay, let's see here. And I want to thank Miriam for saying hello there and Danielle and Tom for joining as well. So thank you all. Any questions you have, let me know below. And if you're excited about what I've been sharing, you might want to apply. And I look forward to seeing your application. All right, take good care.