Rydyn ni i'n gyn hotelsu'r dyn ni yn cymerodol ceisio'r llifosueth yn ddyfodol SRF14730 yn ddyfodol Gil Paterson yn gweithio'r cyfrifau fawr. Mae'r llifosueth gyda'r mollid ar gyfer cyfar ac mae'n deall whisio'r digwydd o'r ddiddordeb sydd gael i'r cy Lydia Gwlydd o'i ddeswiad y gweithiau'r cyfrifio'r ystafell neu'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r rydych chi'n cyfrifio'r ddiddordeb sydd yn ddydd pant yn oedd, yn amlwyd diwrnodol. I want to say a number of things. Thank you for that. Can I take the opportunity to thank members that, for providing support for the motion and allowing for debate this evening, it's an important evening for it to take place? I would also like to welcome members from the Scottish Coat Death Trust and the Richmond Hope, the UK Science, the Muslin Breivants Support Services, child bereavement UK, seasons for growth, petal support, sans-lodians, parents who were affected and Wilma Currother, who are all in the gallery tonight. If I've missed anyone, I must apologise. There may well be people that I don't know are here tonight. I want to use most of my words but not exclusively as you will hear on some of the recent aspects of the good work done by the Scottish Cot Death Trust. 1 in 29 children in the UK today have been bereaved of a parent, brother or a sister. Today marks the last day of the week-long children's grievance awareness week, which allowed all of us to come together to show our support for bereaved children. When a child dies, most of the focus is usually on the adults compared to the siblings. It is recognised that children react to loss differently, however regardless of this, children require support also in order for them to adjust to change and to understand what has happened. Families who use services of the Scottish Cot Death Trust are often worried about how their children are going to cope. When in this position they need to know and that the parents need to know themselves and they worry about the children rather than the row and grief. The Scottish Cot Death Trust offers a valuable home visiting bereavement support service that enables them to meet the parents and children together for more specialist support for children. Referals can be made to play therapy and for filial therapy, where parents are taught how to offer support to their children through structured play. Often referrals are made to specific support available in a children's home area, which is tailored to their age and as such. The trust works collaboratively with a number of other organisations to make that possible, including the Seasons for Growth, Richmond Hope, Winston's Wish, Child Bereavement UK and Simba Charity. The services that are offered by the trust and all organisations involved are not only vital to the children and families who receive them but also to ensure that the widest support is available. I know that Richmond Hope, who is based in Edinburgh, is about to open a centre in Glasgow, which is very welcome news indeed. If I can digress just a little, it would seem to me that, since there are so many organisations doing the sterling work, perhaps it might be worthwhile for the Parliament to consider a strategy to enhance further the great working practices in this vital sector. It is well known that adults find addressing and explaining the topic of death when it happens, daunting, but it is made even harder when it is a sibling of a child and they themselves are still grieving. The introduction of two particular resources, which I am very proud to be highlighting this evening, not only helps adults to approach discussing death for the child but also to help children who are born into a family who have lost a child. The first of those resources is Rory Star. Rory Star, for me, is like a book that you would pick up in a nursery or in a school, and it is so well illustrated and easy read, I am sure, by children. When this book was produced, there was no other resource available in Scotland for young children when a baby died from caught death. The book aimed at children tells the story of a young girl who has just began to get used to it having a little brother when he passes away. It deals with witnessing grief during this time and attending funeral. It reassures children that it is okay to cry about the loss of their brother or sister. For grieving parents who must struggle to come to terms with sudden death of their child, while still being a good mum or dad to the children and remain and remain, the source is an invaluable one indeed. Money was raised by a mum, a woman character whose son Andrew passed away in 1990 from caught death aged 16 weeks. The trust invested the money in creating the resource. The second book, called Andrew's Rainbow, and here we are again, it's in the same type of vein it's made for children, is so beautifully illustrated like the first one. It was following the launch of Rory Star that Wilma became aware of a gap in sibling support for children born into a family after the death of a child. It is so important that these children, often called rainbow babies, are supported in any grief that they feel towards the brother or sister they knew. There will be photographs of their siblings and other family members and important days in the year that are shared by the family to remember their brother or sister. They will form a bond with their sibling through the family talking about memories and looking at photographs. For them it is important that they know they are not a replacement for the child who had died. Some may wonder whether they would be born if their sibling had not passed. The idea is that the baby is like a rainbow after a storm. Rainbow babies is the understanding that the beauty of a rainbow does not negate the ravages of the storm. When a rainbow appears, it does not mean that the storm never happened or that the family is not still dealing with its aftermath. What it means is that something beautiful and full of light has appeared in the midst of the darkness and clouds. Storm clouds may never hover but the rainbow provides a counterbalance of colour, energy and hope. For young children having an older sibling who only appears as a baby in a photograph is a complex situation. They may tell people they have an older sibling or include the sibling in activities such as drawing family trees. They may wonder what their older brother or sister would look like. Would they look like? Would they share the same interests? The book Andrews Rainbow contains the actual words of rainbow children and was written to help both parents and professionals to explore some of the feelings children have about being born into a family after a loss of a sibling. The book I have highlighted is what prompted me to bring this debate to Parliament. I sincerely hope that this debate will assist in promoting the support and resources available to children as well as acknowledging the work of all organisations involved in highlighting the importance of supporting children as well as adults through bereavement. Finally, I commend the work of all the organisations engaged in this difficult work that has brought of immense importance to us all. I now call on Malcolm Chisholm to be followed by Kenny MacAskill. Four minutes are there by please. I welcome all the different groups to the gallery. I only looked into the two that are mentioned in the motion, the grief encounter and the Scottish Cot Death Trust. Although I would like to thank the Childhood Bereavement Network and Marie Curie for their useful briefings for the debate, I suppose that most people might say that all deaths are equal, but it seems to me that the most terrible deaths are when, on the one hand, a parent loses a child or, on the other hand, when a child loses a parent. The Scottish Cot Death Trust, of course, is perhaps best known for the public in terms of the grief that parents feel when they lose a child. We are told that a baby dies still every nine days of Cot Death in Scotland, so that is an absolutely awful, devastating experience for parents. However, what the motion emphasises today is that it can also be a heart-rending experience for the sibling of the child who has died. I suppose that we can imagine that if we think of having to explain this sudden absence of a new life to a confused sibling. That is what the books that Gil Paterson has described have been seeking to do. An honest and heartfelt way of explaining some of the most profound and difficult questions that a child can ask in such a situation. More generally, the trust seeks to support families but also to educate the public and professionals about how to reduce the risk of Cot Death. I pay tribute to their work. The childhood bereavement network and their briefing emphasise how children need support in grief and also point out the long-term as well as the immediate consequences if we fail to do it. That is something that we have to bear in mind. They also remind us about how many children are affected by this in Scotland each year and say that 5 per cent of children have been bereaved of at least one parent by the age of 16. They emphasise the importance of schools and having sensible and flexible people and systems to provide support. That connects with one of the two recommendations from Marie Curie. They recommend that it should be built into the curriculum for excellence in terms of awareness of grief and bereavement for all in school. They also make the recommendation that there should be a national co-ordinator for childhood bereavement in Scotland. I hope that the Government will reflect on those suggestions. The other organisation mentioned in the motion is grief encounter, which also works incredibly hard to help children to grapple with loss and death and to support the family as a whole in such a situation. They also aim to work closely with professionals in the sector, providing training to counsellors, teachers and company employees who will work closely with children who have experienced loss. They also, as the motion reminds us, organise grief awareness week, which started on 19 November. It was moving to read of the candle ceremony that commences the week's event, which is clearly a very poignant way of remembering loved ones who have been lost. The theme this year is supporting parents and carers supporting grieving children. Grief Encounter also runs a helpline, which currently supports over 300 people annually. In conclusion, I would like to pay tribute to their work, the work of the Scottish Cot Death Trust and the work of all the organisations in the gallery, and those who are not here today as well, who work in this very important field. Many thanks. I now call on Kenny MacAskill to be followed by Nannette Milne. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I join in thanking Gil Paterson for raising the issue and, indeed, for his eloquent speech that narrated the depth and complexity of the issue. It is not high profile, but it is certainly high in its consequence, in its effect and, indeed, in its intensity for many. As we all are aware, it is hidden in many ways, and it is hidden for perhaps two reasons. First of all, because of age, it can be hidden because of the inability for a child to communicate, or because perhaps the reticence and the lack of maturity in the inability to verbalise or speak to others. Indeed, that is compounded by the inability of adults perhaps to address the needs of the child, perhaps to be concerned with their own grief in some instances, or it is just difficult, and those are challenges that multiply the problems that affect everybody when there is a loss. However, it is also a culture in Scotland. We do have a culture of big boys don't cry, and even girls sometimes are expected just to soak it up and get on with it. It is not just Scotland, but the western world. It is not particularly good at dealing with death, and I think that it has probably been compounded over recent years, but it is something that we have passed down through the generations, and the older generation who should be able to address it better are not particularly good at helping those who are younger and struggling to cope with it. It is significant. The statistics that came out in the briefing that Malcolm Chisholm referred to from the child bereavement network are substantial. 2,400 parents died in Scotland, leaving dependent children just last year. 3,900 newly bereaved children last year. Around 3.5 per cent of school-aged children and young people between 5 and 16 have been bereaved at some point, and indeed 5 per cent of young people have been bereaved of at least one parent by the time they reach the age of 16. They go on to narrate the outcomes in terms of health, mental and physical, in terms of effect upon education and employment. Indeed, it also says sadly criminal and disruptive behaviour, because the death of a parent by the age of 26 increases the risk of a criminal conviction for a violent defence, and the statistics here are rather stark. I do recall as the justice secretary challenging the prison service about the difficulties that we have with women offenders who are treated very sympathetically for the loss and trauma that they have often gone through and asking them about the comparisons with young men to which they said, well, often the same difficulties applied with young men, but that culture I referred to of big boys not crying, simply soaking it up, transcends themselves and it not being addressed, never being articulated, but having lifelong consequences that sadly has seen them get into poem at young offenders or indeed the adult prison network. That's not to condone the behaviour that they're done, they do have to address it and face the consequences of their actions, but we do try and require to tackle the underlying effects and manifestations of it, because sadly so often what they will have been doing is trying to address their bereavement and loss by that traditional Scottish method of self-medication through alcohol or drugs and that's why we're required to address it. We are blessed in Scotland by the agencies that Gil Paterson narrated. I'm glad to see Richmond Hope, who are in my constituency, who I've visited. I'm delighted to hear that they're extending their services elsewhere. They do face challenges in the resources that they have. A few people do an awful lot of good work with a large number of young people. We do have to have a strategy, but we do have to have delivery. We are in tight and straight in circumstances, probably compounded by what's been happening in another Parliament elsewhere today, but I would ask the minister to ensure that not only do we have that strategy, but we do what we can to ensure that we have that resource for the outstanding organisations that Gil Paterson narrated that are necessary for every individual and especially for every child who's suffered loss. Many thanks. I thank Gil Paterson for securing a debate on his motion this evening. We've seen many members' debates in this Parliament on various awareness weeks, and I feel that it's particularly important that an issue such as children's grief is recognised here. This week exists to highlight the challenges that are faced by children and affected by bereavement, and those children, wherever they are in the country, should have access to support services to help them to cope and rebuild their lives. I note that this year the week is co-ordinated with Grief Encounter, a charity that was established in 2003, which provides grief services to support bereaved children and their families. I'm pleased that we have the opportunity to discuss this important issue on the very last day of this awareness week, and I understand that a number of activities have taken place across the UK since 19 November, including promoting awareness on social media, such as their thunder clap, which reached over 850,000 people and encouraging supporters to organise events, including training days and workshops, for families. The statistics on how many children and young people face this challenge are eye-opening. Grief Encounter says that one in 29 children under the age of 16 in the UK will suffer the death of a parent. In the briefing paper by the Childhood Bereavement Network, it suggests that up to 2,400 parents with dependent children died in Scotland last year. However, those are estimates because they point out that there is not official data collected, which they argue makes service development even more challenging. The outcomes of bereavement of a close relative or friend to children and young people can be immediate and longer term. When children experience such a sad loss, they will experience a range of emotions. They may be concerned and confused and overwhelmed by all that is going on around them. Even if a child has helped through this difficult period, the effects of such a profound loss can impact on their education later on. My nephew and niece lost their mum when they were children. My niece gave way to her emotions quickly and recovered well. My nephew did not, and I am not sure that he is ever fully recovered from his loss. The Childhood Bereavement Network has research showing that, compared to the non-bereave peers, children who have lost a parent are more likely to suffer from a mental disorder, 1.7 times more likely to attempt suicide in young adulthood, and 50 per cent more likely to die before middle age. However, in relation to children's education, the network notes that bereaved children can score half a grade lower in GCSE exams, and for girls bereaved of a sibling, that can be a full grade. The death of a parent before age 16 is found to increase the chances of the bereaved child be unemployed by age 30. Those statistics are truly shocking and show the need for awareness of this issue. In my own region, we have the highly regarded Grampian child bereavement network, which works to assist children and young people to access appropriate support that they need to cope with bereavement. One of its resources is a book called Muddles, Puddles and Sunshine, which offers invaluable practical and sensitive support for younger bereaved children. The book offers a structure and outlook for many difficult feelings that inevitably follow a loss. It aims to help children to make sense of their experience and reflect on their grief and to find a balance between remembering the person who has passed away and having fun. Society must become more open to discussion of bereavement, and one area that has only received limited consideration is the area of pre-bereavement. In many cases, when a parent knows that they are going to die, the stress of not knowing what will happen can affect the child. NHS Choices has developed an information service for children, which encourages parents to talk about their impending death and has suggested that parents start a memory box to give children the opportunity to keep things that remind them of their time together. That can also be done with other family members after their parent dies. I also welcome the work of the Scottish Crock Death Trust. It is perhaps impossible for any parents and families who have not lived through it to understand the grief experienced following the loss of a child or a baby. Having come close to losing my own son when he had liver failure aged 20, I often wonder just how I and my family would have coped had his liver transplant not been available or successful. I cannot begin to imagine how people can cope with the sudden death of a healthy baby, and I am so thankful for the work that is done by the Crock Death Trust to help parents and children in this situation. Can I ask the minister to take on board the need to include bereavement as part of teacher and support staff training? That would fit with recent legislation to widen the scope of teachers and classroom support staff to meet the emotional and diverse needs of pupils. Finally, I congratulate all the charities that work in this area and again to the member for securing this debate tonight. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would also like to put on record my thanks to Gil Paterson for raising the important issue. I also extend my thanks and welcome to all the groups here tonight in the public gallery. The debate has provided a valuable opportunity to highlight children's grief awareness week, organised by the Charity Grief Encounter. More widely, to put on record, our thanks for the excellent work that has been done across a range of different organisations and settings to provide what we all recognise as much needed support to those including children who have suffered from bereavement. Bereavement is traumatic for anyone at any stage—a point that is recognised by Malcolm Chisholm—but it is particularly traumatic when that loss comes in early life. As Gil Paterson said, the statistics are stark. One in 29 children in the UK have lost a parent or sibling. Given the number of children and young people who are affected and the impact that loss can have on them, it is crucial that we provide free professional compassionate support at a time when children are vulnerable. It is in that context of support that I want to mention getting it right for every child. Because within that approach, that girffec approach, the name person role will be made available to children and young people across Scotland from August 2016 following the passage of the Children and Young People Act last year. The name person has a role to promote support and safeguard the well-being of children and young people. I have no doubt that the pain described tonight will be a useful mechanism by which people can find that support that they need. Families may well use the name person for issues that are affecting their child's wellbeing, such as separation, loss or bereavement, and that name person structure—that getting it right for every child approach—will be, hopefully, a structure by which we can signpost children and families on to groups with specialisms that are able to help. We can take on board the points raised through the briefings that I think have been circulated for tonight's debate and the points raised around what we need to do around curriculum for excellence and to better recognise in a national sense the need to co-ordinate support for families and children at this vulnerable time. I recently spoke with a constituent's niece, Dr Rachel Fairly, who has done academic research on the topic of bereavement. She described to me some of the areas that she believed that we needed to concentrate on within the context of grieving. She described that, for some, in the pre-death period, there is a gap in support and that, for some, it is only post-bereavement where help kicks in. That is a point that has been recognised and raised by Nanette Milne. Her study also described that children are impacted by bereavement may suffer a social death whereby their cubs, their scouts, their sporting events that they used to attend to may end while focus is on the family member who is ill. She also described to me about the need to look at adolescents who may find their own coping strategies and that if effective intervention is not there, that may well lead to criminal or negative behaviour. I think that is a point that Kenny MacAskill raised. We need to make sure that the way in which adolescents are coping with those things is not through self-medication or negative behaviour. We need to make sure that we are acting early to help those vulnerable young people to avoid that route. Gil Paterson and Malcolm Chisholm also described the trauma, pain and hurt of children who suffered bereavement and the books that Gil mentioned that go some way to support the family. His and others comments about the pain felt by siblings who lose a brother or a sister reminds me of hearing an event organised by Youth Cancer Trust about hearing a brother speak about losing his sister to cancer who described feelings of sadness, of anger, but also feeling quite jealous that the focus was always on the sister. That complex wrangling of emotions that he had to go through showcased to me, I think, very eloquently the real need that we have to provide that emotional support to help those young people to cope with the trauma that they are going through. That is why, as well as the legislative provisions that I have mentioned through the Children and Young People Act, the Scottish Government also provides funding to a number of organisations that support families at a time of loss. Those organisations include child bereavement UK, cruise bereavement care Scotland, CHAS and the Children's Hospice Association of Scotland. That is why we need to make sure that that support continues and that we continue to provide the support to those organisations that are well placed and understand the complexity of the issue that we are here to debate tonight. The motion that Gil Paterson has for debate focuses not just on the impact of a child losing a loved one but also on the loss of a child and notes the valuable work of the Scottish Caught Death Trust. I also recognise that miscarriage or stillbirth can also have a huge effect on a family, and there are a number of measures in place to help health boards to provide appropriate training to enable doctors and midwives to support parents at that vulnerable time. Through the work of the early years collaborative and the maternity and children quality improvement collaborative, we are also supporting practitioners to deliver improvements in those services. Both collaboratives aim to reduce the rate of stillbirth and a wide range of work has already been taken to help. For example, increasing the uptake of healthy start vouchers, joining up midwifery and addiction services for vulnerable families and supporting pregnant women to stop smoking. We have seen a positive downward trend in the rates of stillbirth. I would also like to mention the work of Sands, a charity that undertakes work throughout Scotland in working with health professionals to improve the quality of care and services provided to bereave parents and their families. The Scottish Government currently provides the organisation with financial support to help to continue this valuable work and to also work with health boards to ensure that relevant staff receive appropriate education and training to support parents at this vulnerable time. A clear message from this debate tonight is that we need to make sure that training and support is not just there for the professionals who work in the health sector but to ensure that that is there also for those teachers and other people who may come into contact with young people to ensure that the training is adequate and that the support is appropriate. To conclude, I thank Gil Paterson again for bringing forward this important topic. It is an emotional topic, it is difficult, it is complex but it requires us all to ensure that we do truly get it right for every child and recognise the suffering and trauma that these young people are going through and the wider family and that we also need to have and bring about a cultural change to be open about the way we deal with grief, to be open about the way we deal with death in Scotland. We need to make sure that we use tonight not just as a debate that we will go home from and forget about but use this debate as a platform by which we need to recognise the greater need to continue the support for charities and organisations that are helping people to cope with trauma and grief and suffering and pain but also make sure that we work practically together to make sure that that dialogue is on-going so that we recognise where challenges exist, we can work together to overcome them to ensure that we are getting it right for every child and not just some children, some of the time but make sure that these children can go on and cope with that grief and cope with that trauma in a better way that does not diminish their long-term aspirations and hopes and fulfil their ambitions to live without having to suffer the pain that they have gone through. Thank you all for taking part in this important debate. I now close this meeting of Parliament.


Oby, Ezeka, yw Willie, fel y rydw i'r Ffordd, Ffordd, Rob, o'r bollwch yn Berlun. Rydw i'n fynd i'r colli Elsie Cynedd, yng Nghymru, a'r Ffordd, yng Nghymru, yw'r Ffordd. Yn ymwysg yma, yn ymwysig yma, y dyfodol yma, o'r Gweithio Gweithlun o'r Ffordd, i'r Ffordd, Iwer, South Africa, Nigeria, a'r Hwyllwch i'r regio. Oby, rydw i'n ymwysig. So, thank you very much, Oly. I think that the first thing for us to put our mind to is how Africa's growth and progress is empirically established to be very much dependent on the scale of economic activities that would happen on this continent in the next couple of decades. There is an urgency for Africa to produce the economic growth that would lift majority Africans out of poverty. We still have almost half of the continent's people in dire straits of poverty, and that must quickly be reversed. That's why fragmentation of the economies of Africa doesn't make any sense. You need scale, massive scale, and its economic integration that enables that scale to be achieved. In order for that scale to be achieved, the two economies of South Africa and Nigeria have to lead by example. Leading by example means that they should be the champions of the latest agreements as a result of the treaty for the Africa free trade agreement. They should be champions of it. They should exhibit the tendencies that show that progress will be made through the ASFTA. Now, empirically, we know that 1% growth in Nigeria or in South Africa creates a half a percent growth for the rest of the continent. You can't have Nigeria and South Africa not understand this leading role. It is unfair to the continent for it to be that any part of this continent would reverse the gains that are possible through closer integration of African economies. I believe that we have a crisis that is mounting, but we can de-escalate the crisis. The reason that a platform like WEF has been useful for us as a continent is that it has enabled public-private dialogue to happen. We need to put our voices as citizens on the continent and say to our leaders, rise to leadership, it is wrong for there to be no consequence for bad behavior that would reverse the gains of economic integration for a continent. I believe only that there are some important steps that the government of South Africa should be able to take immediately in order to send a signal to the people that have been victims of what I call Afrophobia. It's not xenophobia. I haven't seen any Italian or any European. I haven't seen any Chinese or Indian being harmed, being maimed, being killed, losing properties. I haven't seen that. I have seen a targeting of especially my country Nigeria and I have seen a lot of single story where people are saying things like, and I read something recently that was released where it was all Nigerians engaging criminal activities in South Africa. Well, I also know that that's a single story. 18% of the people that teach in higher institutions in this country are Nigerian academics. Many Nigerian doctors are the ones who serve, provide health services in the rural areas of South Africa. They have lived visibly here. This danger of a single story must be taken on by the government immediately to de-escalate any further degeneration and deterioration of relationship. So, one, I think that the president of South Africa and the government should place it out there clearly that there would be speedy and conclusive prosecution of those that have been arrested so far for the latest violent upheaval. And then, second, the government, the reason that I want that speedy prosecution is that that's a departure from what we've seen in the past. In the past, we never really saw that there was consequence for that behaviour. So, if they did that this time, it would send a sharp signal, unequivocal, that they would punish anyone who lays their hands on people who are resident in South Africa from the rest of Africa. Second is that the government must go out there and engage with the victims of the violence. There is almost a sense that there is no link and connection between the government right now and those who have been victims. It shouldn't happen because what is sense is a signal. Some people are saying there's a tacit approval of this conduct by the government. I don't want to believe that. But if the government does not engage with the victims of these violence in the way that has happened so many times, it's a serial act that is almost a mountain to savagery. We shouldn't in any way not punish this. Let the president, let his government connect with the victims, have a discussion with them, assure them that they are welcome in this country. It would help in giving them the social licence that they require to be calm and to feel a part of this country. Yesterday only I met with Nigerians who live in Western Cape and they were saying some of us have lived here 25 years. Many of us are married to South Africans. We have children that are South African Nigerian. What exactly is going on? This has to change. Minister Unbiweni, yesterday during the opening plenary, mentioned that any Nigerian that wants to live in South Africa is welcome to live in South Africa. You urged South Africans and people from all over Africans to call themselves Africans. He also mentioned the continental free trade agreement as the greatest biggest thing that's happened to Africa since the post-colonial era. Are you satisfied by the language and the strength of the signal that he is putting forward on behalf of the government? I am not. I am not. It's not adequate. It is too tentative. It is not as reassuring as it should be. So what I think the problem is, is a failure to act. There's a failure to act and that needs to change. Let's just also look because this is an issue that moves beyond South Africa, of course, back to Nigeria. What do you say to people back home in Nigeria who are criticising you and others at this meeting for attending this meeting here? You see, when there is a failure on the part of the governmental systems, the citizens must make sure that there's no failure on their part. It was very important for me to be able to put my voice out here that South Africa must do the right thing. My own country must do the right thing. The two countries need to come to the table immediately and de-escalate this. You see your message to the Nigerian leadership is? My message to the Nigerian leadership is that they should be open to an overture by the government of South Africa to de-escalate this on the basis that the South African government would do a number of the things that I have said. Visit the people, make a swift prosecution process to punish people who have done this kind of behaviour, make sure that you can even consider a set aside for compensation to victims of these kinds of acts. Number four thing that I think that the government of South Africa needs to do is that it really needs to offer a sincere apology to the whole continent. Across the continent right now, people need to hear that. I'll have questions we'll follow. Elsie, representing the World Economic Forum, of course we are the World Economic Forum. We see we like to build our aspirations for better societies around the economical progress. What's our view? What's your message to the leadership here in South Africa, in Nigeria and your message to leaders across Africa? The World Economic Forum will turn 50 years next year. A big part of what we do is fostering trust and supporting and enabling dialogue between different stakeholders. It's not just public-private sectors we had, but also opening up the space for other critical voices, particularly when there are failures in leadership by government and business in particular as being the power brokers. During that time what we have seen across the world in different areas is that conflicts easily escalate and move into positions that are very difficult to recover from. Therefore we spend a lot of our time enabling conversations to bridge the gaps in understanding and address grievances by different parties so that we can support progress. We can support the ensuring that we're able to deliver to the citizens, which is what we purport to stand for. We all want a better world. Conflict does not allow for that. These kinds of tensions had everyone. Both in South Africa and Nigeria, it's not just Nigerians who suffer in South Africa and it's not just South Africans who suffer in Nigeria. Properties are owned by locals in some cases. You have employees who are local. As Madame Obie shared, you have integrated societies as well, where there's intermarriage and other forms of integration. Particularly in the context of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement, what is a great concern to me is, if you allow me to date, to just walk back a little bit into a history of two years, which was that in Durban during the last World Economic Forum on Africa 2017 meeting, our youngest youth community, the global shapers who were there from all around Africa, committed to drive an open Africa initiative. So during that time, the FCFTA was still under negotiation. Already they were sharing concerns about issues and whether the people are being brought along on this integration journey. And they undertook to try to travel across Africa by bus, not by air, and see how easy or difficult it is. The truth is, they were not able to, visas, infrastructure. But wherever they went, they also held local conversations about what open Africa meant to ordinary Africans. And the reality is stark. There's this serious resistance and fear about others coming in and taking jobs, et cetera. So the second concern here is, we really need to listen to the people and see how to address differences in perspectives. Very often it's not factual. We assume a lot and we have to also advocate for responsible leadership to correct misperceptions because misperceptions and information has consequences and the consequences can be grave. And the last aspect which has become increasingly clear here with respect to urgency is that critical voices are not being heard. And so we as the forum are trying, as we are with this, to expand the space for the voices of ordinary people to be heard such that leaders realize that they need to take action on things and too often the spaces for that kind of dialogue are missing. This meeting is the largest meeting for our strategic partner community outside of Davos. There's a tremendous and growing interest amongst the world's largest businesses, deep pocketed, far-sighted organizations that see long-term value and potential in this region. What do you think the message will be coming from them? It's an interest of all of us to resolve such tensions as fast as possible, as amicably as possible and as peacefully as possible because it is very easy to destroy through violence but very difficult to rebuild. And at least the commitment from the foreign's perspective, we launched a peace building platform last year, which is not necessarily for major conflicts per se, was etc. But we're seeing an increase in a proliferation in seabold protests which are violent across Africa just over the past two years, which means that we need to be much more deliberate about the dividends that were fought for to create peaceful democratic societies because once it's very easy to burn, we can't afford to burn. Questions? Okay, lady of the back row. Just because I know you doesn't mean everybody else does, so please give us your name, tell us where you're from. Sure, Heidi Juckers from ENCA. I just want to pose a question to you about, you know, you're speaking about xenophobia but I also know that you're very vocal about and you've been very involved in the movement of bring back our girls. And currently we have a major problem in South Africa with gender-based violence and the President addressed the nation yesterday about, you know, action that wants to be taken. But what is your approach on dealing with gender-based violence and issues around the abduction of young children? Okay, so gender-based violence will take two or three at a time. Lady there, please, yes. Hi, it's Prenesian Idio from Bloomberg News. I just want to get your take as to whether the tensions between two countries pose any threat to the African continental free trade agreement and progress that's being made there. Okay, risks to the trade agreements? Lady next to you. It's Llamise Ongodegi from FIN24. Yesterday President Sororama Posa sent out a message to the citizens. It was firstly about gender-based violence and then he ended it off discussing xenophobia. And I wanted to hear from you. Do you think that's been taking the right steps as a government or would you want him to have said more and actually apologise at that in that message? Okay, last lady there. Thank you. Hi, my name is Lillian Chijingi from RIS News. Sorry, I'm going to deviate a little bit from the xenophobia. I'm going to talk about Robin Mugabe. We just heard he died today. What do you think he should be remembered for and what can you see about his economic policies because he's been criticized in that regard? Let's take the lady here on gender-based violence, Heidi's question. Heidi, you should have come to our press briefing yesterday. What I can tell you is in the closing plenary which will start, one of the key outcomes will be the deliberations and the action that was taken as a result of this press conference. And from the lady to my immediate left yesterday who's got to get a bit of a coalition and we can actually announce that something is happening as a result of this meeting. We'll be hearing more about that in the closing plenary. But, Obi, it's definitely a good platform for you to remind us what you think the actions from this meeting should be with regards to gender-based violence. So part of what we agreed is that it has to be a sustained focus on it and that the platform of web, now having taken this on in a very significant way, starting with what was discussed at a meeting yesterday, can be a major global voice for addressing gender-based violence. And that second, there are legal issues involved and that enforcing the laws and also making sure that countries that don't have the laws that punish that bad behaviour must have those kinds of laws and the ones that have but are not enforcing, it is urgent for there to be consequences for violating the rights of women. And then we talked about the voice, the fact that any violence against a girl or a woman is to shut down their voice. No one has a right to do that and that the agency and the power that people must have to be able to express an opinion, be a woman, a tribe in the workplace, live peacefully at home and not be discriminated because of the agenda that that right needs to be enforced and needs to be respected. And we also talked about the role of the private sector in this process. We went all the way to the role of family level, this social conditioning that the male child is preferred to the girl child and therefore that grows through and the patriarchy and the misogyny that it entrenched within society, we need to radically end it and that it would take a coalition of effort at international level, at national level and family as well as business level and government. There are also issues of policy, there are a number of policy measures that can be taken that would help to reduce the scourge of gender-based violence. I think that all in all people left that conversation as shared of the many tools that we can use to attack this because it's a global problem and it is reducing the productivity of the world for women to be scared that they would be beaten, they would be shot down, they would be raped and all kinds of things would happen to them and there would be no consequence. That's impunity, the world cannot live with this impunity going on against women. Right now, we have only a few minutes before the closing of plenary starts so I'm going to ask you just to cover very, very quickly a few words, answers for the rest. Elsie, you wanted to make a quick comment about this. Yes, just talking about the inclusivity of voices and building on what Madame Obby said. I've had a number of men approach me and say, you know, we're not all bad but there's no space for dialogue that includes us in the conversation so that we can also be part of the solution in addressing the bad apples among them. So this is just an input. Let's not leave the men who are supportive of a different reality and a safer space and a more secure world for women. Great point. Okay, free trade agreement, any risks, quick, yes, no one? Big risk because you need national domestication. Fine. Robert Poser, he sent a strong message yesterday. I suspect I know what you're going to say. Not strong enough. Okay, that's enough Elsie. I'm thinking about time here, nothing else. Elsie, as you've had throughout this meeting, people are tired of talk, they want action. So for everything we've said with these issues, with other issues, action will speak louder than words. Yes. Okay, one word on some, Ogarfi, how will he be remembered? As if it's a conflicted, as a conflicted legacy, conflicted legacy. I concur. Great. Thank you so much. This is now over. We have a closing plenary to attend.


Affiliate marketing tutorial for beginners. Easy $5,000 a month. You know, when I first got started, I was thinking, gee, man, if I could make some money online, that'd be really cool. And I finally did make a sale and it was for $10. And you may say to yourself, well, $10 is nothing, JR. And it is nothing. You're right. But the point was, I cracked the code. I was able to make some money online. And I figured if I could make $10, maybe I could make 20, maybe I could make 100. Since that time, we've sold millions and millions of dollars of products online. But once you realize, once you get that first sale, once you realize you can do it, then the limit, there is no limit. There really is no limit. You know, we've been growing and growing year after year and we've gotten involved in a whole lot of other different things. One business would get a little bit slow, so we would work to earn another business. But the bottom line is we learn the techniques, the skills to actually make money online. Now, if you want to learn these things, stick with me on this video. I'll share them with you. But the first thing I want to get in your head is $5,000 not much money. Okay, $5,000 not a lot of money. Five grand a month is not a lot of money. Now, it may be to you right now. Right now, maybe you don't make $5,000 a month. Maybe that's a tremendous amount of money. Or maybe you do make that and you just want to supplement and you want to make another $2,500 or $3,000. So, we're going to talk about $5,000. And first off, I want you to get into your head, what is $5,000 a month? It's $166.67 a day. It's not a lot of money. Okay, it's not a lot of money. But I want you to understand it is a small amount of money, okay? What you've got to do is you've got to be a merchant online. You've got to actually become somebody who sells stuff online. And you got to have the right tools and skills to do that. And that's what I'm going to give you in this video. Now I've been selling online, shoot over 10 years. And we sold millions of dollars of product, both digital and physical products. And don't forget also, subscribe there real quick before we get into this. Hit that subscribe button and ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so that I can notify you every single time we do a new video. And give me that thumbs up. That really helps the YouTube algorithm. Okay, so the first thing you need to do is decide on a niche, okay? You have to have a niche. Now I've got several niches. My wife's got niches. We both sell stuff online. I have one niche that is survival food, survival cave food. You're welcome to look that up. We've been around for years, sold millions of dollars of that product. And that is a survival niche, okay? So we're in that niche. So you got to select your niche. And then once you select your niche, whatever that is, and I have another niche, which is how to make money online, you've got to decide on your products. What are the products that are going to fit within that niche? Once you've done that, once you've figured out what your niche is and what products you want to sell in that niche, you got to start building a list. And I can't impress this upon you enough because I didn't do this in the beginning. I didn't know about building a list. I didn't know how important a list was. And it is tremendously important, okay? Now I work on my list every single day, day in and day out. I really toil away on building that list. But I want to tell you this up front, if you haven't started yet, the list is the most important thing. And it's not, a lot of people say, well, I'll just go out and buy 1,000 names or 10,000 or 100,000. It won't work, okay? It won't work because you're going to get crappy list. It's not going to be good. In addition to that, they don't know you, they don't trust you, so they're not going to buy from you. You've got to build your own list. Now, if you really want to get going in the beginning, I would suggest doing some webinars. Webinars are great. You can do joint venture webinars. You can say, hey, I'll promote your product. If you promote my product, there's various sites you can go to. You can go to clickbank.com. That's a really good one. Find some products there. Promote those, do a webinar on them, whatever you want to do. Sometimes they already have webinars set up there that you can just promote the other person's webinars. That's a great way to go about it. So let's go through all these steps here. First thing we want to do is we want to review the products in our niche, okay? How are we going to go about doing that? Now, by promoting somebody else's product, you kind of skip that step because you're already using all their research and all their data. You don't have to go through the, oh, I've got an idea. Let me see if I can come up with a product stage because that's already been done. Here's a good example right here I'm going to put up on the screen right here. This particular person here is promoting, looks like Hot Wheels, okay? They have over 300,000 subscribers for Hot Wheels.  That's a lot of people. I'd love to have that. Now this guy here, this is Philosopher's Notes. He sells books, okay? Book Notes for his particular niche. Now that's a special kind of review that usually does really well if you have a very specialized review. And also comparison with direct competitors. So here's another one right here and I just searched that it's a nice dicer versus a salad chef, okay?  Now what these people are doing is they're doing these videos and in the description of the video they're putting links to these products. So they're getting you to watch these videos and when you watch them, if you click the links they actually get paid and they make money. Now I did a search for best hair straightener and this person here actually does reviews and they did a review on hair straightener. So if somebody reads the whole review here and then there's a link where they can actually click through and buy that hair straightener. Now what they do on their blog is they review flat irons.  They want to straighten their hair and since they review them people come there to that site to get that information but if they click and go there and buy it boom, they've made some money. Now I would tell you if you're going to do these reviews and you're going to use affiliate links make sure it's a good product, okay? Don't just review anything and say it's good and it's not good because your reputation will get built on this. If you review a product and you say it's good and somebody clicks on it and buys it and they like it, they're coming back to your site and they're going to probably look at your other reviews.  The more involved you can be with the product the better off you are. Now I have some affiliate links below and I have links down there for my camera and my lightings and the stuff I use in my office here and that's involved because I actually use them. These are things I use so I can recommend them to people. So the closer you can be to that the better off you are. If you're doing a review on this flat iron thing that women use and you're actually using it you like it and you talk about it and they see you using it you're a lot more likely to sell that product than if you don't know anything about it and you're a bald headed guy and it doesn't use a flat iron you don't know anything about these things. So try to find products that you can actually involve yourself with. Now up on the screen here I'm gonna put what an affiliate link looks like and we have some below. You don't see them cause they're embedded where it says click here but this is what the actual long link looks like. It's got the long in quotations reference tail at the end of the regular link so that they can actually get credit for this and they can actually get paid. Now you can sign up to be an affiliate at Amazon absolutely free it doesn't cost you anything. You do have to maintain a certain amount of sales to keep that account active if for any reason you don't have any sales in a certain period of time they will close your account. However, you can apply for another account the very same day and start all over again. This is a screenshot right here of Amazon and it shows you where you can get your affiliate links you can get a picture affiliate link you can get a text affiliate link and when you're logged in you're already in your affiliate account this will just show up in the top left hand corner of Amazon when you're there. So all you have to do is navigate to a particular product once you're on that product you go up click create link and it'll create for you in a text or picture or whatever you want. Now this will give you your own affiliate link like you see right here. You just copy this link and paste it anywhere you want when people go there by the product you get paid. Now here's a cool thing though side note to you if they don't buy the product but they stay on Amazon and they buy something else within the next 48 hours you get paid on that too. Now I said the next thing is to build a list. There's many ways to do this. I suggest cartra opt-in pages. I'll put a link below for cartra. You can watch a video on it. It's free to watch the video. If you sign up there's a $1 trial so it really doesn't cost much. Now some of the ways you can do this is through a hello bar. That's the bar at the top of your page let me put that up on the screen here. You can see that right up here. It says pre-order the newest book stab factory today and get it for less. And you can click right there when you click they opt in. So there's an action bar right there. The next way is an exit gate. So if somebody is hovering off your page a pop-up comes up and says hey click here enter your email to get 10% off or to get a gift card or to get a free download or whatever it is you can grab emails by doing that. And then the next way is through a sidebar widget. You've seen them off to the side before when they offer something a discount or a free product or whatever if you enter in your email. Now you wanna make this as simple as possible. If you give that visitor 20 things to do they're not likely to do any of them. Okay so you wanna make this one click one email really that simple. If you wanna ask for their first name you can but if you ask for their first name and email and last name and phone number and address and all that you're not gonna get any opt in. So you can't get a lot of information on these blind opt ins. Now here's an example right here. Free course double your traffic in 30 days plus secret bonus value to 300 bucks. Now as you see here this is a really simple one. You know you put your email in there yes let's start the free course yes let's start the free course. 100% privacy I will never spam you. So that's a pretty good opt in right there. Since you're doing things that are really specific maybe you're doing things on a mini oven or a juice maker or something like that. Since it's that specific it doesn't take a lot of names to make money off your list. I mean with your first 500 names you can start emailing them and already start making money. Now you're gonna wanna keep them engaged though. You can't just send them offers and sales all the time. You have to have something that has some value. Here's a one I found of Neil Patels. It says hey I just wanna share with you these latest quick sprout blog post. Let me know which thing. Triple your email opt in rate by using this six step lead magnet creation process. Creating great content isn't enough although getting lots of traffic and social shares is nice it's not the goal of content marketing. Pop quiz what is the real purpose of any marketing to make sales click to continue. So he's got several call to actions here and he has another call to action in the actual PS right here. Now every now and then one of these call to actions we're gonna ask them to buy something but you have to send some emails that give them great content that give them value in between where they will unsubscribe from your list. And then step three like I said earlier just educate them with webinars. You have to do webinars on an ongoing basis. You can do live webinars. You can use something like ever webinar where you have an evergreen webinar where you record it once and they can click to go view it but you gotta do some webinars.  And you gotta think about this the way these live webinars works what makes you buy let's say in a refrigerator more? Seeing an ad somewhere or if you were to see a live person with that refrigerator showing you all the options in action. Well if they're in action and they're doing all this you're probably gonna be more likely to buy that refrigerator. Now I like using tools like Cartra. Cartra will automate a lot of this process for me my webinars, my emails, my opt-in pages and I really don't have to do much. I am gonna put a link below for Cartra make sure you check that out. You can watch a free video there. You don't need a credit card. If you do choose to get Cartra it's a $1 trial for 14 days which is a pretty good deal. Now the last step is you can actually grow your business with pay per click advertising.  Now here's a example for lead pages and what they do here. This is their ads. You can see it. It came up on the top of the Google results and it says free live webinar. How to triple your conversions. Claim your spot today, register now. It's pretty simple. It's cut dry. I mean this tells exactly what it does and I like these better than these real wordy ads. Now here's an ad for unbalance. I think this is pretty good. It's four and a half stars 4.7. Of course they did that. It says make a high converting landing page in minutes 30 day free trial multi-user accounts, client management, real time stats. Now if you notice these aren't complete sentences. What these are is these are the benefits of using their product and the features. And one last example right here. This is Farada. It says join me for this free training on five figure launching. In this webinar you will learn what is launching and why does it matter. The three keys that five figure launches have in common and it says click to see more. So all you do is click to sign up right there. So there's a lot of ways to do this guys but bottom line is, bottom line is making five grand a month is not that hard to do if you just put forth the effort. If you want to go the affiliate route I would recommend click bank, share a sale. I use both of those. You could also use JV zoo, which is very, very good. There's also click booth ads for dough commission junction and the Amazon affiliate programs. There's a lot of stuff out there for you to pick from. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you got some knowledge out of it. Matter of fact, I'd like to know what questions you have about this. If you would put it in the comment section below. If you've had some experience with affiliate marketing, my goodness, you got to share it good or bad, put it below so everybody knows about it, okay? If you like this video, give me a thumbs up. It really helps the YouTube algorithm. Also, don't forget to subscribe. If you haven't done so, click that button. If it's red, you haven't clicked it yet. You need to click it, turn it gray and as soon as you do that, a bell will pop up. You want to ring it, turn on all bell notifications so that I can notify you as soon as I do a new video. Also, don't forget, there's a $97 course below. I'm giving it away absolutely free for a limited time. Thank you so much for watching this video. I really appreciate it and I'll see you in the next one. Hey, thanks for watching my video. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel and click that little bell right here so you can be notified every time I do a new video. Also, click on one of those videos there. Keep watching on my channel.


Man, it's so crazy how stuff could change so fast. I feel like Darius Slay only been there for like what a couple years, right? And now he's being released because apparently the Eagles and Darius Slay were talking about a restructured contract trying to move some money around and whatnot, but they just couldn't agree to terms. And then it came out just yesterday that they were allowing him to seek a trade.  Not in a bad way, not in no ill-willed type of way, but like, hey, okay, we couldn't work it out. If you wanna seek a trade, that's cool. We ain't got no problem with that. But now they ain't gotta look for no trade partners and neither does he, cause he's a free agent. He's getting cut. So Darius Slay, one of the better cornerbacks in the league too. And it says that they're doing a post June 1st release. So when they do a post June 1st release, that allows them to spread out the cap hit to spread out the dead money over the next two years. So it sort of softens the blow a bit.  He gonna get a job like right away. It ain't gonna be no thing for him to get picked up by somebody.  But yeah, it shows you, man, NFL, this is what I always talk about with NFL players. Hey, get your money, man. Get as much bread as you could possibly get. Get it as soon as you could possibly get it because these teams, like you'll be signed to these long-term deals. You could be, if you signed to like a four, five year deal, you're fortunate if you make it to a year three, past year three. But if you make it a year four, it's like, ooh. And if you play out all five years, oh man. Wow, that rarely happens, man. But it's possible, but it's tough because stuff is just, it's always changing and whatnot. Stuff is always moving, but now Darius Slay. At least this way, some good things about it is that he can pick his next team. He doesn't have to go through the Eagles picking his next team for him. Or even if he found a trade partner, he doesn't have to go through, all right. Do the Eagles really agree with this compensation for me? Even though, since they released him, if they would have found a trade partner, they probably would have took whatever for a team to take him off of their hands. Cause when that happens, when a team knows that they're gonna release somebody no matter what, it's like they'll take something rather than nothing. Cause that's what they prefer. But yeah, this just makes it easier for him. And it also makes it easier for whatever team wants to bring him on because now they can come to terms with him on a brand new contract. It's not gonna be the carryover from the Eagles contract. It's gonna be their own. So, but then for him, he gets to pick a brand new place without going through all the hassle of having to be traded and whatnot. And the two teams agree in the terms and all that. So, fresh start for Darius Slay who it shouldn't be long before he finds work at all.


Hello everybody.  I miss the lively busy Longmont of just last month. I even miss getting stuck behind the trains. But I'm really proud of our empty streets. Proud of all the offers of help. People are exchanging on Facebook and Nextdoor and I'm just really proud that the only place I can find a crowd is in the drive-thru line at Culver's. That means that we're doing what we're supposed to do. That means that we're taking this, stay at home order seriously and respecting each other. Our businesses really deserve our admiration for how they've adapted. Do you think they're making any money staying open just for carryout? They're doing it for us. To put money in the pockets of their cooks and their cashiers. They're converting their bussers into drivers. I hope they're making their rent. But the only selfish motive I can put on them is of keeping your loyalty so you'll come back at the other end of the tunnel and eat with them. You know what tunnel I mean. I'm smiling because there's a light out there and it is not the oncoming train. It's the hope that we're building together. Did you know that there is a realtor over on Long's Peak who's giving away cleaning supplies from his front porch? Even hand sanitizer and toilet paper. So you might want to stop by and add to his supply if you've got any extras because I'm sure he's not going to have any trouble with getting rid of what's there. Did you know our craft distilleries are making purified alcohol for disinfecting? Donating that too. Some even retooling to convert it to hand sanitizer which is harder and harder to get those little bottles. Our city staff is working around the clock to bring it all together. The common thread in this is common for the common good. Common good. That's all of us. So thank you everyone from the bottom of my heart. Now I've got some favors to ask of you. First, if you haven't already please watch the governor's speech from March 27th. It really explains why we're doing what we're doing and it's easy to find on his Facebook page Governor Jared Polis. And today March 30th he showed us the first evidence that this is all working. That's a great thing. Second, comply. Most of you of course already are, but all are needed. All of us. Practice social distancing. Wash your hands. Stay home. Walk in your own neighborhood. Spread the word. If you see somebody doing something unsafe just say something. You can be the Grinch who drives the kids off the playground very nicely. The life you save may be their grandmas. That's all. That's all we need to do. Just do our best. Smile at your neighbor from across the street. Call your friends. And if you see a public servant, whether police, fire protection, public works, please thank them. They are risking themselves for us. They are working so hard. Hardest of all, and it's always been for the common good. Now, be well.


Well, Sintos has been a great supporter of DAV for several years, not only with our 5K, each year that we've run the series, and this year with the huge, huge sponsorship of the national series and the bibb sponsorship, the honor bibb sponsorship, but also through employee engagement, which is so vitally important to what we do. Anybody can go into the 5K, DAV5K.org, and join one of the Sintos race teams in any city that they're racing at, and that's how they can join, or they can donate if they don't run or walk. We have one of the longest running corporate military recruiting programs. We think it's very important that we, as a company, have a responsibility to support and to help them get back into the civilian workforce. Basically what we're doing aside from the financial sponsorship, it is getting as many of our people involved in it as we can. A simple and quick way to learn more about how you can support DAV would be to go to our website at DAV.org.


Complexities are increasing all the time and the research I'm interested in is trying to combine emerging technologies with the sustainability agenda. I think combining two such broad issues I think it's quite evident that we need better capability of foresighting. Current technological advances are expected to bring economic, social and political transformations of an unprecedented scale. Advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, communication technologies, robotics, biotechnology and material science are set to change our future. Foresight capabilities and emerging technologies is one of the prioritized research themes of MISTRA geopolitics. One part, helping international organizations and states make sense of and use the potential of these technologies to achieve the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. AI has the potential to really work as a shifter of geopolitical balances in the sense that it gives the opportunities for countries to really leapfrog development. Taking a significant jump in this technology, so instead of having to go through all the development phases that other countries have been doing, they can directly go to what is the latest technology, what is the most effective way of solving these sustainability challenges that we are facing. I think it's important that we from the sustainability community start to look at emerging technology with fresh eyes. A concrete example of an AI application which has been used to significantly reduce the energy consumption is actually in these big data centers where they use machine learning to optimize the usage of energy and then they could reduce the energy consumption by 30%, which of course is a major achievement. When it comes to Sweden, looking into our most exciting companies, we see a lot going on in the green transition. Not least if we look up in the northern part of Sweden where we see this green industrialization, new industrialization where you take advantage of new technologies in combination with the resources that we have. How do we make sure that this technology benefits everyone or at least as many people as possible? And I really think this is one of the major risks that we will not see this widespread adoption. There are three very important critical elements that needs to be in place in order for us to fulfill the UN 2030 agenda. Technologies, especially forward-looking emerging technologies are nowhere to be found in the agenda as it is written right now. This is extremely important to add that component to the agenda. The second part that is missing is actually geopolitical considerations between nation states that are there to fulfill the agenda. It is states that have signed the agenda in the human system and it's states that needs to deliver on the agenda. Still geopolitical aspects are not there to find anywhere in the agenda. Thirdly I think we need to increase our capability to look forward because the agenda is explicitly forward-looking, looking into 2030, painting this grand vision of a sustainable future. In order to achieve that future we need to explore different future pathways to that future and assess those different pathways, pros and cons, trade-offs and synergies in order to fulfill the agenda and the strategies. We in Mystery of Politics can help just a little in order to navigate this very complex policy space and people from the policy community come to us for advice. I will be very, very proud for being part of this research program.


If I had started with this idea, it's great that, you know, you can find drugs against the cancer, but let's lock the mechanisms by which the cancers are metabolizing, eating, growing. So it turns out that cancers, because they're growing so quickly and because they're dependent so cutely on nutrients, are different from normal cells. Lots of scientists have known that cancers metabolize amino acids, which make proteins. Luke Hadley and I showed that cancers metabolize sugar, especially when they're given stress with a drug differently than normal cells. So there are, in fact, Achilles heels for cancers, which will not affect normal cells, but will affect cancer cells. You may have some side effects, but they're nowhere near what you would expect from people.