Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, excellencies. Welcome to our panel on the youth imperative, which we think, at least, that this is probably the most important subject that is going to be discussed today. Youth is the biggest challenge and, in my view, the biggest opportunity in the region. We have a fantastic panel with us with all sorts of capabilities and knowledge and activism in their areas. Let me introduce them, and then I'll let them, if you don't mind, frame the discussion and tell us what do they think is the most important opportunities that we are missing in addressing the youth challenge in the Arab world today. To my left, I have Boudoural Qasimi. She is the chairperson of the Sharjah Investment Authority. She is also an entrepreneur and she is an activist in women issues. Then we have Umar Al Ghanem, banker, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and runs family business. Then we have Dr. Mahmoud Jibreel, politician, served as Prime Minister of Libya for a while. He is very relevant to our subject today and expert in training and strategy and has spent years going through training programs across the region. Then we have Princess Carolina de Bourbon Parma. She is an activist and she is the representative for partnerships in Switzerland for the United Nations Relief Works Agency for the Palestinians. Welcome to you all. Welcome to my panel. I'll start with Boudour. Please frame the discussion for us. What is it that we are missing? Thank you, Fadi. It's an honor and privilege to be here. I want to start the discussion with sharing some stories with you about successful entrepreneurs that I personally know. The first story is of this young Jordanian woman. Her name is Noor Al-Hasan and she set up a company called Terjama, which translates documents from Arabic to English. The interesting thing is that she employs a lot of people who work from home, mainly women, and mainly in Saudi Arabia. So it gives them the flexibility to work and to get an income while they're still at home. The second story that I want to share with you is of Khalid Al-Khadir, who I think is here today. He's a Saudi entrepreneur and he's set up Glowwork, which is an amazing initiative that provides employment for Saudi women. And he told me yesterday that he places 26 women a day into jobs in Saudi Arabia. He's a commendable person, actually, for doing this. And thirdly, I want to talk about Najla Al-Midfah, who's here as well today. She set up her company Khayyarat, which is a platform that helps young Emirates get into the private sector, and offers them the training they need to get into the private sector. So these are just three stories of what's happening in our part of the world. And it just illustrates that, actually, it's not all doom and gloom for the Arab millennials. They're actually good things happening. And we need to talk about these stories and share them. And I want to back it up with some statistics as well. In the UAE, I think SMEs contribute to about 94% of the companies in UAE are SMEs, and they contribute to 60% of our GDP, 30% of them are run by women. And I heard you say, Fadi, once in an interview that you get pitched an idea every single day for a company, and you invest in one every two weeks. Is that correct? Something like that. Yeah. So, I mean, what does that show? It shows that things are happening in our part of the world, and we need to talk about these things. Thank you very much. But I'm not going to leave you alone with this one. Let me throw some statistics at you, specifically relating to youth and female youth engagement in the economic cycle of the region. Let me tell you, female youth unemployment in the region is double of the male. So it's at 44%. 44%. It's practically half of them. While 50%, over 50% of our university graduates are women. So there is a massive mismatch. Woman participation in the job market in the region is at a mere 18%. It varies from countries to countries in Lebanon. It's a bit higher. In Saudi Arabia, it's different. In Jordan, it's at 18%. But the most important statistic that I see is very relevant is raising employment rate for both young workers and women to the global average creates 58 million jobs in the region. So if we address the issue of bringing women into the workplace, then we're addressing 58 million jobs. You say, in one of your interviews, I strongly believe in the importance of equipping women. Your Majesty and Your Highness, welcome. You say, I believe strongly in the importance of equipping women to be active contributors in the development. So what do you mean by that? How can we actually bring our women youth who are educated, highly educated, highly capable, but then suddenly something happens. They graduate and they're not part of the economic cycle. Why? What is it that we're not doing? There are a lot of factors, and I might not be able to touch on all of them, but yesterday I read something interesting actually in the Jordan Times. It was a story about this woman, her name was Wujdan Rabani, who wanted to study electrical engineering. And at the time, her parents and her family had said, actually a woman to study electrical engineering, that's unheard of. You're not going to climb electricity poles. We've never heard of that. She actually went ahead and studied electrical engineering, and you might know her now. She is actually the Secretary General of the Energy and Mineral Commission in Jordan. So what does this story tell you? There are probably two things that I can take away from that. The first is perceived gender roles. We have to change the perceived gender roles that we have in our society, so we need to talk about that. And secondly, people like Wujdan, they need to be highlighted more. So it took somebody like her to break that barrier and go ahead and follow her dreams for more women to be able to do that. And that's just one aspect. Other aspects include we need to have more maternity leave, more legislations to support women, and also parenting should be a shared responsibility between both the mother and the father. And in our part of the world, in our society, unfortunately, we don't see that so much. So many issues need to be addressed. Thank you. So you're saying it's a bit cultural? It's cultural, but women need choices as well. So for example, we need to offer them flexible work, we need to offer them part-time work, the option to work from home. And I think the more choices women have, the more likely they are going to become contributing to the economic growth. Thank you.   You're very passionate about Jazeel Arab. In a recent article, you wrote about six or eight months ago in the Huffington Post. You say we need to have on our radar screens youth unemployment and reform and education. They go together. So what do you mean? What is it that we're missing in our education system that does not get our youth the jobs that they need specifically in the private sector? And that's the issue that you've been addressing for years. Yeah. Fadi, thank you. You know, if we look at the youth across our region today, I think there are three cares that we need to cover in order to be able to address that. First is building confidence. Second is job creation for that youth. And then a call to action for what we can do in order to be able to affect change for them. And if we think about the building confidence, my company, we conducted a survey, 2,200 youth across the region, across the GCC and non-GCC countries. And we asked people who had started up companies what their issues were. And Fadi, you work with entrepreneurs all the time. When you ask an entrepreneur what their biggest issue is, it's running out of money. You know, my burn rate, how much cash I have left. And sadly, amongst entrepreneurs in our part of the world, the number one issue they had was government regulations. Number two was running out of capital, but number one was government regulations. And people who were on it to start up companies but weren't able to, their number one factor for not doing that was fear of failure. And in a part of the world where we don't have bankruptcy laws in many of the countries, and many young entrepreneurs face criminal liability when a company fails. There's a lot of risk around that. So, you know, we really need to build confidence amongst our youth. And then we need to create some jobs for them as well. And, you know, we look at one of the themes of the web sessions today, it's infrastructure. We spend 5% on our infrastructure whereas Asia spends 15%. So we've been seriously underspending on our infrastructure. And that's something that could create a lot of jobs for our youth right now. I mean, so we talk about changing education systems. And yes, you know, we spend a lot on education and we're not getting the yield on that spend. And we're not creating enough critical thinkers who are going out there and coming up with the right types of solutions that we need in the private sector. But what are things we can do now? We could spend more on infrastructure and create more uplift and create more efficient economies that have more trade. There's only 10% inter-Arab trade. Europe has 70% trade. Policy in terms of the bankruptcy laws and creating laws that make it easier for banks to be able to fund SMEs. Some risk sharing there. And I think we'll touch on some of those things later. And education. I mean, so getting critical thinking involved. Earlier stages. So getting people with the types of skill sets. If you go to Silicon Valley and you ask what degree people have in Silicon Valley. It's typically not about the degree. It's about the type of thinking they can do. Whereas in our part of the world, we're so caught up with what degree and teaching that specific subject matter, but not teaching how to think. And we need our education systems to teach how to think more. Because when you have that, that's when you come up to the solutions like an Airbnb where you create a parallel industry with capacity that was just there. And you solve problems, innovate the type of problem sets. So I want to challenge you on a couple of things. Please. As a banker and as a private sector employer. What is it that the private sector can do to encourage employment? What are you doing as a big company for startups, for instance? What are you as a bank? And we know that banks are shying away from giving loans to small and medium sized enterprises. And there certainly is the big issue of availability of capital for startups and to create that entrepreneurial environment in our region. So why do banks shy away? There is a $260 billion gap in financing SMEs in the region. It must be a very lucrative business for you. And only 8% of the bank loan portfolio is to small and medium sized businesses. And it's only 4% in the Gulf. So you're at the lowest level in the Gulf. And yet you have a huge unemployment problem with your nationals. What's the problem?  So let me cover the first part. What do we do as a big company? And how do we foster entrepreneurship? So we're involved with many things. But you mentioned in JAWS. And that's a program that we're very involved with. And I've involved with it across the region. And JAWS now puts 400,000 youth through the program. And if you look at the sample set of people who go through the program. As opposed to sample sets of people who didn't. The level of entrepreneurship increases fourfold. So it really does teach these young people the skills and what's required to be successful in the private sector and to be successful entrepreneur. So that's one thing that we spend a tremendous amount of resources, a tremendous amount of time getting involved in. And trying to teach young people how to be entrepreneurs. The SME problem. I think you're right. I think banks should be doing more to fund SMEs. I'm happy to say that the bank that I'm chairman of Gulf Bank has just come up with the new SME funding program that we've done together, which is at first for the region, as far as I know, which is where we've done risk sharing with the government. Where the government takes part of the risk for the portfolio for the startup companies. And the bank assumes part of that risk as well. And the rationale we pitched to the government, and the rationale was we as a bank, if you put our money on the line as well, are better at choosing the credit risk than the governments are. Governments typically don't have good investment track records. But if you make the risk reward for us a little bit better by sharing some of the risk with us as well, then we're going to invest a lot more in this.  This exists all over the world. But it's just re-implementing it. And now we've been running it for two months and I'm happy to say we're getting some traction on it. And then there's an innovative program that just came out from the government of Kuwait of availing two billion Kuwaiti dinars, that's $7 billion for startups and for... We're accessing that. And that's like... If it's available for the rest of the Arab world, we'd be very happy because $7 billion is a lot of money. So maybe we can get some of it here in the region. But we have some great entrepreneurs in Kuwait and hopefully we'll be able to make use of it. You would have no excuse from the entrepreneurship perspective. But Fadi, you think that, right? So you're going back to capital. But we did that survey and I told you the result of the survey. So it's not lack of capital, it's a number of problems. The number of problem entrepreneurs have is government regulations. That's the number of problem entrepreneurs have. It's not an issue that you need to throw money at. It's an issue that we need to make it easier for entrepreneurs to be able to go out there and work. In my company, I have over 200 people who deal with government regulations and bureaucracy. And so I have an unfair advantage. Young entrepreneurs don't have that. They need somebody. And so one of the things we're looking at now as part of the SME fund is setting up a mini-ministry in Kuwait for young entrepreneurs. They'll streamline things for young entrepreneurs. And rather than it taking such a long time, make it more of a meritocracy, not a worstocracy within the... And that's critical. And that pins down the responsibility of the private sector because we claim that to be powerful, we rub shoulders with ministers. So why don't we actually rub shoulders and lobby for the ease of this bureaucratic process? I mean, why don't we put our power, because we're so proud of it, into the use to ease that process? I think ultimately companies are comfortable with the position that they're in. Are we afraid? I think many companies are, but we shouldn't be. Because if we're afraid of entrepreneurs coming in, then what's going to happen is that we're going to have companies coming in from the outside who are going to eat our lunch. And the lunch is being eaten right now. So what we need to do is we need to make our markets more efficient and more competitive, because if we don't do that, then we as a region become uncompetitive. And we will lose our lunch taken by somebody else. And Dr. Mahmood, you come from Libya and the challenges in Libya are completely different than today, than they were before, and certainly than the rest of the region.  The biggest challenge, and I'll let you address any issue you want, but the biggest challenge I view in Libya and among the other troubled countries in our neighbourhood like Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, is a lot of our youth are holding guns today. For various reasons. That worries us all, obviously, but this is the biggest challenge because these are the future of our countries. How do we actually take away that process of being militants to being productive elements in society? And I know in Libya that's probably the biggest challenge.  Well, thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. The issue of young people in Libya who turned militant and carrying guns today and some of them refused to give up those arms. I think it's just, Libya is just a case of point. Libya can be repeated in some other countries if we don't pay attention. The world has changed substantially and we are still doing things the old way. When we talk about SMEs, we talk about SMEs as a solution to a problem of youth. The youth are not a problem. They are the solution. I'm glad when I heard His Majesty this morning talk about Vision 2025 because that's where the whole thing starts. National economies in the Arab world, they don't have vision. Most of them and some of them manage to develop visions but they don't execute those visions. They are still in the shelves. The function of any vision is to position your economy within the context of the global economy and the regional economy so you know your competitive edge. At that point, you have an identity of your economy. Then you can start mobilizing your resources around that competitive edge where you pave your roads, where you build your schools, where you build your hospitals, where you plan your cities. It's all crystallized around that identity of the economy. In that sense, our youth can be trained, can be educated. Our scientific research can be geared toward that end and what we do is, in a sporadic sense, isolated islands. Every ministry works in its own. Feeling that we are doing something, spending budgets, but at the end we talk about GDP. Even in the entire economy, GDP is a function of getting oil from the ground and selling it. The real GDP is when the economy manages to create jobs. This is the real GDP. Today, I would argue that Daesh is the biggest employer in the Arab world. This is sad. Actually, it's the government. Which is the question I wanted to ask you. When we talk about education, we still talk about education in the industrial age. Today we move from access to knowledge to the management of knowledge because this explosion of knowledge is much higher and much bigger than any curriculum can contain. There is no single school in the whole world today that has been designed around the concept of management of knowledge. We have to manage complexity, we have to manage diversity, and we have to manage a flow of information. We are not trained to do that, but the new world is completely different. So if we need our kids to be a productive force in a new economy with a certain identity, we better revolutionize our thinking first. That we start by positioning ourselves within the context of the whole world. Two, developing the identity of our economy. Three, gearing our educational systems, our training system toward that end. In that sense, you will find that SMEs will be connected to mega projects. So they have the sustainability of a growth. But SMEs now just a painkiller, no more than that. And you can ask bankers the percentage of failure to pay the bank back. I helped SMEs in Egypt and Libya, no man, and I'm acquainted with the cases of failure. Simply because it's just a problem when I get rid of it. Keep them out of the street because if you don't keep them out of the street, then you're going to end up having what happened in Libya, in Syria, in Yemen, and in Tunisia and Egypt. So we better, because 67% of the Arab population, this is a real wealth and we are wasting it. We are afraid of it. We should embrace it instead. But how do we do that?  How do we move away from aspirational thinking and all these McKinsey studies that come our way and others, and move them into implementation? What's the problem? I'm a constant conference goer and I hear constantly government officials telling us about their vision of what needs to be done. And in some countries it gets done. But the biggest challenge is moving from theory to actually practice and actually implementation. The success of our governments needs to be viewed based on implementation of what they say. What stops you from doing that? Is the bureaucracy too powerful and too complacent to actually take the vision of a powerful leader or a visionary leader and actually trickles it down to implementation? What did you face as a challenge other than the gun when you were a prime minister? Or when you were in the previous government during the different days of pre-Arab spring? No, we can't take the eight months when I was a prime minister as an example. Simply because that period was a crisis period. There was only a single objective of how to get rid of Gaddafi, how to get rid of the regime. No more than that. There was no time for planning and no time for visioning. Though before the regime was down, we developed a division called it also 2025. And I can't claim that it's one of the best visions developed because we looked at the Jordanian vision, which is by the way one of the best also because it was developed by an NGO and it was financed by a private sector. So the government was not even involved but the vision was a good one. The Emirati did the vision, the Qataris did the vision, the Egyptians did three visions, the Omani did the vision. The question is how to translate this vision into concrete plans and you measure up the execution and the progress achieved as a result of that plan every year. We don't do that. We just do a vision as a cosmetic thing. But why? Why does government have to give us cosmetics? It's a question when the big boss, the king or the president or the leader, whatever the title is, is convinced that he can pull this country because this is a time of crossing. This is a time of crossing. I mean if you look at Singapore or South Korea, Singapore started in 1965. All Arab countries were independent in 1965. But where is Singapore today? Singapore just few rocks in the sea. They don't even have water to drink. They do recycling. So the question is the vision of that leader, if he can trust a group of experts in his country and have this group of experts surrounding him all the time, listen to them, because I can put my money in this. The security of any regime today depends on the issue of development and the issue of inclusion. It's not security apparatus anymore. It's not armies. They did not serve Gaddafi. They did not serve Mubarak. And they did not serve bin Ali or Ali Abdullah Saleh. So what I'm saying, what took place in those four or five cases uprising, Arab uprising, this is just the beginning and we are having now some sort of a resists because what took place and the inclusion of Daesh, the insertion of Daesh to the scene. But I think as long as those structural problems we have in our economy, we have in our government, we have in our social systems and our cultural system to defeat Daesh or to defeat terrorism, it's a holistic approach. It's not a question of guns. You have to give those kids an alternative. And that's why you ask it how those kids can give up their arms. They give up their arms, give them an alternative. Make them feel that they are part of the future of their own country. Include them in the process. But if you are afraid of this and that, those people if they get educated, then they're going to be a threat to the regime, the security of the regime. The more awakening of the street, this is to know what I'm saying. The new age, the new paradigm is saying, knowledge is all over the place. You cannot prevent it. Ideologies are out of place. Boundaries are out of place. Even flags. Today, my kid can chat with anybody all over the world. No police in the world can prevent him. Not only this, our apparatus, security apparatus were built around the concept that even the oppositions, we know they're headquarters. So we can arrest them at any moment. Today, you have a virtual party. The guy who is in China and who is in the Emirates and who is in Libya and who is in Morocco, they are in one party and they are chatting. Place and time are irrelevant anymore. So it's a new world, but we are dealing with the old tools. And the solutions are always local. The solutions are there. Are always local, because we can't blame the virtual world. Let me go to Princess Carolina and then I'll get back with another round. Princess Carolina, your work is with Honour Wa. We all know the work of Honour Wa. We've been around, unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you're looking for decades now. How can we take the experience that Honour Wa has had specifically with education in Lebanon and Jordan and with Palestinian refugees and apply it to the massive challenge that we have with the youth that are coming to Jordan and Lebanon today that are probably a lost generation now because most of them are not even going to school. In Lebanon, there are more school children aged, Syrian school children, kids than there are Lebanese. The school system in Jordan and Lebanon cannot absorb them. So when we're talking about youth, how do we actually not lose that generation in the coming three or four years, because apparently the problem in Syria is going to take a while. Thank you for that question. Fortunately or unfortunately, it's unright celebrating its 65th anniversary this year, which means that the issue of the Palestinian refugees has been there for that long, even a little bit longer. So there are lots of lessons to be learned from that. Just to get back to your question, what can we learn from the work that Honour has done with Palestinian refugees during crisis situations? I'd just like to highlight a report that was issued by the World Bank last year that has indicated that the level of education that Honour provides under the circumstances that it provides the education to the children during conflict and other problematic periods is extremely high. Now, why is that relevant to your question? It means that during conflict, during displacement, education is seen by organisations such as Honour as one of the most important elements that we have to continue doing and providing, because looking at the youth and looking at providing good education to children is obviously providing hope for the children themselves, but obviously for their families as well. So what can we learn from Honour in the cases of the current crisis is that it is important and it is worth investing, especially that it's possible. So what I would urge in this case with what is happening now is really with the public-private partnerships that we're discussing in these couple of days is for the private sector also to help support the youth in the region through these institutions. How do you think they can do that? Well, by providing assistance either through knowledge, networking, financial means to those institutions that provide education. I just want to highlight, just continuing on that, education is one of the most important. I think everybody agrees it's not a difficult topic to discuss. What is difficult though is that once you've finished education and even if it's high level of education, we still need access to the job market. And that's probably one of the biggest challenges for Palestinian refugees these days. What can we learn from Honour again in the current crisis? We don't want to repeat that for the Syrian refugees. We don't want to repeat that for any other of the refugees. So integration as much as possible in the societies if we can. Integration to the job market giving people hope and dignity especially is crucial. And related to that is also investing much more in women. Young girls, UNRWA has all since 1960 had 50% female participation in schools which is also remarkable and that needs to increase and be sustained by the entire region. And to come back to a point that you raised earlier with my colleague here. What can be done in terms of women participation? We had a gender session this morning and we discussed that a little bit. I think what needs to be done there is that more men need to speak up for the participation of women. How? I mean what is it that we're not doing? You're not talking enough about it. We're not talking a lot what? Enough about gender. So it's a men issue relating to women? I think what the issue is is that many women talk about it and many women talk amongst themselves about it. But we would like to see more men talk about it. But let me ask you a question and you might not know it because you don't necessarily live amongst us. But what is it that you think does not get women to move from their college to a job? And then the 50% college graduates fall into 18% participation in the economic cycle. What happens? Why do you think there is that gap? Is it that there is a clear discrimination against employment of women? Or is it that women also, well they're home makers so that we don't want to underestimate the power of the necessity of choosing to be a homemaker? So that's a choice also. What do we do? What are we missing? What does Europe do? So why do you have higher participation than we do? A little bit higher. I mean the problems are the same worldwide. I don't think we can make a huge distinction. So societal change for sure. As I think was mentioned before as well, it's also just providing better work conditions. So more childcare provisions, flexible working hours, etc. But it's also just understanding why it's beneficial to have women to work for us. It's not just having a quota of 50-50, that's not the most important thing. It's also understanding what the benefits are of having a mixed board, let's say, at the CEO level. And that's one of the things that is a question of education, I think. Thank you. And I'm going to go back to ask everyone about the education. The ILO report from the World Bank tells us on jobs in 2013. It says the main focus of education systems continues to be the production of future employees for the public sector. This is a general statement by the World Bank that says education systems are producing people who are actually, their knowledge base is to work in the public sector. And the public sector in some countries is employing anywhere between 80 and 50% of the workforce. So that's, and then I want to discuss that story. I want to also go through and get you to comment on the recently published ASDA Arab Youth Survey. A couple of months ago it came out, a couple of questions that are of interest to us on youth. They asked a question, how concerned would you say you are about employment? Asking youth, ages 18 to 22. The answer came 81% I'm concerned. So youth are obviously concerned. And it's not only a general statement, it's also in the GCC where probably employment in certain countries are higher. It's 73% in the GCC. It's bigger in the, it's a bigger challenge in the Levant countries here in this part of the world. And then the next question says, how confident are you in your government's ability to deal with unemployment? So suddenly you plug in government into the process. How is government able to deal with unemployment? And the question in the GCC is 68% of the people of the GCC tell you we are very confident that the government is going to resolve it. And 61% in non-GCC countries. So while policymakers continuously tell us we don't want to employ people in the public sector, we want them to be employed in the private sector. So there is a question of misperception here. Even education systems are not giving the skills that are needed for the private sector. And then everyone that is not getting a job is telling us we think government effectively, we are very confident that government is going to resolve it. So there is, it's a paradox. What are the skills that are missing to employ people in the private sector? What do we do to change the education system to move it for employability, specifically in the Gulf? There is a big challenge of expatriates having the majority of the jobs and the nationals working in government. How do we change that formula? I think we need to overhaul our education system, that's for sure. But I think it's collective responsibility. So it's not just the government's responsibility. I think everybody should play a role in that. And I mean I heard this interesting story once about somebody who was interviewing candidates for a job. And he interviewed candidate after candidate and they were all non-suitable. And he decided to go to the university to ask them what kind of students they're producing. And they said, well, don't look at us, this is how we got them from school. So he goes to school and the school says, well, don't look at us, this is how we inherited them from middle school. You know where this is going, right? So he goes, don't look at us, this is how we got them from preschool. And he goes to preschool and he asks them, how come those students are not prepared for the job market? And they say, well, this is how their parents gave them to us. So actually the role is universal, it's collective. So parents have a large role to play, governments, the private sector, civil society. It's a collective responsibility. Why isn't it being done? I mean we all know that that's a problem. What's the missing link? Who is really not doing his thing to actually take it to the next level? Because the challenge in a digitized world is no longer a 21st century issue. The 21st century is moving at an accelerated mode that requires a revolution in the education system rather than a slow process of reform that effectively keeps us where we are because the world is moving much faster than we are. So we all agree, right, that we need critical skills for the 21st century. That's something that we all agree that we need. So that's something that's out there at the table. But we also need an entrepreneurial spirit. I think that's missing in our part of the world. And an interesting documentary that was made called the Lemonade Stories interviewed successful entrepreneurs and their mothers. And it goes to show how their mothers really influenced these people like Richard Branson, for example. And the culture at home and the parents influence onto their children actually determines whether they're entrepreneurial or not. And also, you know, not being afraid to take risks. That's something Amr pointed on this morning. And I think that's something that's missing in our part of the world. If we look at places like South Korea, and I think we spoke about that in Malaysia and Singapore, they invested in their people before investing in infrastructure. So they built their people first and then the people built their nation. So it's doable. It just takes time. And I think we need to work slowly at it. And we need the catalyst to speed things up. Amr, what sort of skills do you need or do you require in the private sector in your company, in your bank, to employ more of the graduates from your country? What is it that the education system is not giving them? And let me throw a bit of controversy here. There is a massive movement that says we need to protect our Arabic language and don't get excited. And we do. I also worry about that. But I also tell you, if you don't speak English, you're not going to get employed. And that paradox is another story altogether. So we want to protect our language. But employability means you need to speak languages, specifically English. You need to have computer skills. And you need to have other technical skills like critical thinking, solutions, thinking. Tell us. I think we need to stop looking at our ministers of education as places to put, you know, we need to start thinking about those places where we put our very best people.  So, you know, our KPIs are wrong. We're measuring the wrong thing. And you run a business funny. And you typically get what you measure. So if you measure the amount of desks, the amount of school buildings, that's what you're going to get. And we have a lot of desks, we have a lot of school buildings, and we have a lot of teachers. But we don't measure quality. And the touch point where you get the traction is the teacher that interacts with the kids. And unfortunately, we don't have KPIs around the quality of teachers. And I haven't seen that in any nation in the Gulf, at least. I don't know, broader than that. But in the Gulf, I can speak to that. And so I think that's one area where we really need to improve on the quality of the teachers that are interacting with the kids. But I still think there's a lot the private sector can do in order to skill kids up. Because it's easier to point to governments and say, hey, look, we're not getting the quality of the people that we need, so we can't employ them. But I think there's a lot of skills that we can, there's a lot of skilling that we can do as a private sector in order to be able to give people skills. So the Regional Business Council here at the WEF, we put a goal in to have 100,000 youth affected by the region, by the, yeah, the Honda Mantaquah. Right. And we now are already 55% of the way there. And we hope to get more than 100% of the way there by Davos. It's by just, by utilizing the bandwidth of people's organizations for training. There's a lot of bandwidth within the private sector. And how to allocate that bandwidth and use that bandwidth for training and do something about it.  And the problem is pretty obvious. But what do we do about it? And how do we as a private sector look at our responsibilities, our neighborhood, this is where we live, and how do we affect some change? And so there's, I think, a lot more we can be doing as private sector people in order to skill people, in order to help people. There's some great programs, some great NGOs out there that we can support. And our organizations can bring in more people at the great school, high school level, volunteers. Do we need to, don't we need to participate as private sector in the curriculum setting with government? I mean, is there something in Kuwait where you actually participate with the government in saying, here are the skills we need, and here's what we need you to actually teach our kids? Does that exist? Does anyone ask you, what is it that you want these kids to learn so that you can employ them? You're asking me a question that you know the answer to. They don't. No. And I personally haven't seen it anyway. No, I mean we haven't. And that's a big gap. I think that we also have a problem, Fadi, with our youth in that they lack imagination. Our entrepreneurs lack imagination. So I touched on a survey earlier on. And one of the questions we asked these 2,200 youth across the region was that if you could do any business, and you're guaranteed to succeed in this business, what business would it be? And one, two, and three were retail, something in retail, real estate, and F&B. And information technology was number five. And we even sliced it amongst the type of degrees that people had, with high school degrees, bachelor degrees, master's degrees, or PhDs. And it actually didn't shift much across degrees. So I think we need to have examples of entrepreneurs, people who have success, role models, like you Fadi, people who have gone out there and started up companies, and people who have gone out like the telebots of the world, people who have started up technology companies, and hold them up as role models, as opposed to the real estate developers and the retailers, because where we're going to create our next Google, where we're going to create our next Uber, is going to be around the technology space. And we need more role models around the technology space to have people try to emulate and try to head towards. Thank you. Dr. Mahmood, you've been involved in training for a good amount of your career, other than being a politician. I tried to research to discover what training you do. I couldn't figure it out, but I'm going to assume that you've been training public sector employees. Am I right? So why do you train public sector employees? I mean, what is it that they're missing? Are these people trainable so that they can move into the private sector? Is there that much of a big cultural difference between people that work in the private sector and the public sector that we're missing in here? Well, unfortunately, most of the public sector institutions, they train simply because they have budgets, no more than that. Oh, so they train because they need to spend the money? But there is no strategy to reform the public sector to make it more efficient. I'll give you an example. When a trainee comes back after he finishes a certain training workshop and he goes back to his work, if he even dares to try to implement what he learned during those two, three weeks, I mean, somebody would tell him just to be quiet. It's been like that for a while. They go for training because there is an allowance. They go for training because there is budget. And they go for training because it's good to do shopping, and sometimes you take your family. But I would say that Arab management from 1965 until today, the amount of billions which been invested in training is much more than anybody can think. And the state of Arab management today is much worse than it was before 1965. Why? Because the management at that time was inherited from a colonial period. There was still some systems. So colonialism was good? No, this is fishing in different waters. But I just want to go back to your question about education reform. I don't think it's only about education. Education is the last part of the whole picture. What I think we really need is restructuring the socialization process in our countries, the way we bring our kids in our homes, the media, the way we understand and interpret religion because in the absence of a progressive understanding of religion like the school of Ibarushet, what we have is the school of Ibn Taymiyah and what he's doing in our sites today.  You cannot have state-of-the-art education and the kid receiving the contradictory message from the media and from his parents at home. So there should be some source of compatibility between those four factories, producing the same skills, the same attitude, which should be compatible. The question at the end, do you want those kids to be on your side as a productive force to rebuild your country, rebuild your economy, or you want them to be part of Daesh in the future? Thank you very much. And that question comes to you, Princess Carolina. So what is it? So the Palestinians have suffered for decades and you have a whole generation of productive Palestinians that have graduated from honor school that are on the side of productivity, highly educated. Honor school are famous for having a very powerful education system. Even though they are refugees and refugees are normally angry and they should come out and actually be very angry while you have Palestinians all over the world building countries and being entrepreneurs and being very productive. What is it about that? I think there is a culture of education and seeing the importance of education very, very strongly amongst the Palestinians. So talking about the holistic approach, family really fosters the importance of education for their children. So they have invested a lot in that, not only the refugees. What the problem is, and I know we're not supposed to talk only about the problems, but the issue with the Palestinian refugees in particular is that the education is good. And I think we all try to see youth as a potential and not as a problem. And that's one of the emphasis that we really want to make. But if you don't end the occupation, if you don't end the blockage of Gaza, if you don't deal with the civil war in Syria, then there is very little that people with refugee status can actually do. And that is something that we collectively have to look into and not rely only on international organizations such as UNRAT to resolve. Thank you very much. And I'm going to get some questions from the floor. But before I do that, talking about resolving these issues, the Arab Youth Survey came out again with these conclusions for this year. It says, how do you feel about the future of your country? So talking about how do the youth look at their country? 63% of the youth, just because we talk about their problems, well 63% tell us they're positive. They are positive. They think the future of their country, 63% of them are positive. They're either optimistic, they're excited, or hopeful. That questions were quite positive. So youth apparently think more than we do, who are much above their average age, think that there is something that's happening. And then another question says on the long run, 67% of youth say our best days are ahead of us. So I mean they're basically saying today is not great, but 67% is ahead of us. 70% of those people are in the GCC. 57% are here in the Levant. So even among all the problems that we are facing in the region, we still see 50 majority of people still say they're optimistic. And 73% in North Africa think the future is ahead of them, that there is a positive element out there. And then most importantly here I think for this discussion, and then I'll bring out the questions, is there was a question that was posed. Do you intend to start your own business in the next five years? That's an important question, because everyone thinks people want to work in the public sector. 39%, which is a staggering number, say yes. So something is that these people have that hope and aspiration to actually start a business. There is a failure somewhere else to translate that into action. And then people decide to go into the public sector or actually don't start a business. But most of them are actually, 16% of these people want to be in high tech and 15% in retail. So there is a positive story here on the youth in the Arab world. And I will conclude with that. I will thank you all, but we have about five or six minutes for questions. And do we have a microphone anywhere here? Yes, we have a microphone. Questions. There's one here and there's one there. Excuse me, yes, yes, yes, yes. Don't be shy. And then the next one comes here. And then we'll take a couple of questions. No comments unless you really, really, really feel about it. You need to comment and then you have five seconds to comment. Definitely you have to give the opportunity to everybody to ask questions. Don't worry. No, we have five minutes, so I could, we could, you know... I'm Yusef Global Shaper from Robots in Morocco and I'm, thank you for such a discussion. So my question is related to educational system. If you have the opportunity and this question to everybody in the audience, if you have the opportunity to create a new education system that will allow young people in our region to grow, what kind of component you're going to put in such system. And if this system exists today, then please share it as well. Thank you. Please. Anyone can choose to answer. I think we need to stop looking at education as a competition and look at more as a collaboration because the skills that we need in the real world are collaborative and we're all trained in all of our educations to compete with each other and it's a competition between each other. And I think we ought to find ways to be, to learn how to be more collaborative and get those critical thinking skills but yet learn how to work together and how to get things done. Thank you. Does anyone feel that they want to say something? I just want to add quickly that it's so interesting to have the Global Shapers here and I hope maybe next year in the session to have them speak at the youth panel because we really want to hear from them actually. Okay, so next. You're also a Global Shaper. Another Global Shaper. You look like one. We all have the same look here. Really? From Tripoli in Libya. Mohamed Hamouda. From Tripoli in Libya. Yes. Yes. My question is about how we, what's your perception and thoughts about including social entrepreneurs as a solution for providing jobs? Can I turn the question to you and tell you what do you think we need to do with Libyan youth to put them in the productive side of society because you're part of the youth and the question is to you because I would have loved you to be on the panel with us. Okay. Go ahead. Tell us. You have one minute. Actually, I think the most important thing is inclusion and the inclusion in decision making and also in the process of analyzing the problems because one of the main problems we think that we know the problem but in fact the problems we don't know them yet. This is the first thing. The second thing is... So you need to be asked. Yes. Nobody talks to you. To be asked and to be involved. And the second thing is like learning by doing because lately UNDP has done a survey about the civil society mapping Libya and we realized that the number of civil society in Libya per people are more than our neighbors in Tunisia and in Egypt. So this was one of the... So the civil society running the country today? Well, we hope so. But in fact... That's a good answer. We are not. So this is one of the things. It's like learning by doing and also inclusion. Thank you very much. I think we will receive the right solution. Thank you. Next. We'll have the lady here. What? Awa? Awa. Yes.  Yes. Okay. Where are you from? I'm Asma, a global shaper from Gaza Hub. So my question to you is that we have, like most of the panelists said, is that entrepreneurship and the focus on SMEs is the future because it constitutes a large percentage of the different countries. But my question to you, don't you think that it is dangerous to assume that entrepreneurship alone will be the future of the minor region and the way to solve the different problems that we are solving? And if it's not alone, what should be accompanied with entrepreneurship? So are you challenging the question that entrepreneurship is actually a solution, the only solution? Yes. So if it's not, then what do you think should be the solution? Exactly, and especially... Tell us. I want you to tell us. Okay. Just a minute. But first... No, I mean, because it's important that we hear you out. We were only giving you five minutes, and we're sorry for that as global shapers, but your voice needs to be heard. We are promoting entrepreneurship, but the question is that how many successes has been on entrepreneurship in the minor regions? And if we are looking at the success, how many failures has happened and what are the causes of the failures and how it affected the dreams of the young people who come up with the entrepreneurship dreaming that it is the solution, but we left them in a bad, in a worse situation than before. I do believe in entrepreneurship, and I want to start something called entrepreneurship sees, or Gaza sees through entrepreneurship program, but it's not alone enough. Are you involved with the Gaza sky geeks? Yes, I'm a mentor there. And it's a fantastic program. It is fantastic, but the point is that we bring these people, we talk to them about entrepreneurship, we give them training, and we give them seed funds, but after that, what happens? Occupation. Occupation? Yes, and also other things around. So we give them hope, but we leave them in midway. We don't support them the whole way. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, we are out of time, and we have to end here. Thank you very much. Panelists, brilliant.


Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that all things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. Hey, everybody. I'm here with Carolyn Gage, a very accomplished playwright, short story writer, essayist, general renaissance woman who's been working for many years in theater primarily. Welcome, Carolyn. Thank you. It's a thrill to be here. Well, it's great to have you. Let's start with a little bio, if I may. Carolyn Gage is a playwright, performer, director, and activist. She author of nine collections of lesbian and feminist themed plays and 75 plays, musicals, and one woman shows. This is amazing. Actually, it's closer to 90 now, but, yeah. Is it really? That's so impressive. Yeah. Carolyn specializes in non-traditional roles for women, especially those reclaiming famous lesbians whose stories have been distorted or raced from history. For 22 years, Carolyn toured in the U.S. and Canada and in Europe in her award-winning one-woman play, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, offering performances, workshops, and lectures on lesbian theater. From 2003 to 2016, she ran a production company, Cauldron and Labyrinth in Portland, Maine, where she workshopped and produced her own plays, frequently sending them to regional or national bookings. Let me continue. In 2014, Gage was one of six featured playwrights at the 53rd annual World Theater Day, sponsored by UNESCO in Helden, Rome in 2015. The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College has your papers. That's great. That's a very prestigious archive also. Written the first book of lesbian-themed scenes and monologues, as well as the first manual for lesbian theater production, Take Stage. I'd like to pause here for a minute. You published it in 2016. It's the subtitle is, How to Direct and Produce a Lesbian Play. Actually, I published it, oh my god, I published it like I believe in 93. Yeah, but I think that it still holds true. It was written for lesbians in my generation, generally did not go to academic theater programs, nor did they come up through community theater because we're often gender nonconforming, women of size, butch women, et cetera. It's just a hostile environment. There was this burgeoning lesbian culture with all kinds of music festivals and drumming, but theater was not part of that. I wrote a book, so any woman who wanted to produce lesbian theater in her community would know how to do it, what the steps were and what you needed to do, because I was feeling like we clearly need to have our own theaters and we need to train ourselves to do it because we're not welcome in the traditional places where you learn theater. So I still feel that to some extent that's true, that lesbian culture needs to step up and start producing our own work. It sounds so daunting though. I've been reading lately a lot about grants culture and all that sort of fundraising stuff and the shrinking budget for all of the arts. Well, and the thing is with theater, it's the kind of the thing where it's the quality of your defect. I mean, it is live. That's why it's so powerful. That's why playwrights historically end up in prison and that doesn't happen to novelists. It is an incredibly powerful art form. You're creating an alternative world in real time and space and people are experiencing it and it is just so powerful and because it's live it has a short shelf life. You work for two months or 10 weeks or whatever and you put this thing up for two weekends and it's gone and if you missed it, you missed it and it doesn't translate well. You know, let's videotape it. Well, you know, one video camera in the back of the theater, it's not the same. So I think for a lot of people it's like, wow, for that same amount of effort I could have blah, blah. I think that the fact it's ephemeral, that it's there and then it's gone and it doesn't leave an artifact is, I personally find that magic and powerful, but in a corporate capitalist culture it's like, where's the product? You know, there's no shelf life here and if I make a video, I can sell it for 30 years. So I understand it and lesbian time is priceless because of, you know, we have busy lives. It's a lot and it takes almost military levels of organization and hierarchy because you have to have 15 people all doing the same thing at the same time on Friday night and then on Saturday. It's like a military maneuver and it requires that level of discipline and hierarchy, two words that are not big when you're talking about lesbian recreational activity, discipline and authority. It's like, no, thank you. I do that at the office. So there's a lot of reasons why I think it's a tough interface and it's why I wrote the book, but as I say I wrote it 35 years ago.  It has been hostile territory for lesbians and we don't have that history and we don't have that affinity and that's, that's been a huge handicap in my career for sure. Let's turn to one of your plays that I've loved in this wonderful collection produced by the esteemed late academic Rosemary Kerbs, she anthologized all these plays and Amazon All Stars is the title of the volume and also the title of your play. It was fabulous, but at point when I read it, many years after its publication, you know, I was struck by how much I missed seeing it in the theater because it's a musical and I wanted to hear, I wanted to hear the songs, you know, so it is, as you say, a difficult interface. Since we're talking about Rosemary, let me ask you about something that she said in the introduction to this volume, she said simply putting lesbians on stage is a radical political action. Is that still true?  The rest of the play won't make sense. She doesn't have to say a word, just walk across the stage in that tuxedo, pour the tea and leave. The whole rest of the play makes no more, no sense. I used to say that well, it's like this archetype, it's a universal solvent, it dissolves everything and then you're like, well, what kind of container are you going to put the universal solvent in? That's the sort of conundrum and I think, well, what's the narrative container? And it really has to be a butch-centric narrative in a, in a theater that is buy for, about and serve the interests of lesbians and we don't have that, you know, but yes, I, I do agree with that quotation that it is, it is absolutely a revolutionary act to put a lesbian on the stage. In 1996, and then still applies. Still applies. Maybe even more so because, you know, the disappearing L is actually a thing in queer community, which that wasn't true 30 years ago. I feel it's tougher now, that representation. The censorship is more rigid than it, than it is now. It is, than it was then. Let's talk about your bio if we could. Sure. You're originally from Richmond, Virginia. You left at 18 and how did you happen to start writing plays? Well, I kind of rattled around. I went and I went out to Boulder, Colorado, and I lived there for a while. And then I hitchhiked around the country for a while. And then I thought I was going to go to chiropractic school and be a doctor. And then I didn't. And, you know, so there was kind of a little bit of wandering the wilderness for about a decade. And then around the age of 32, I began to recover memories of my childhood. And I, which shouldn't have been a surprise. I really hadn't been home since 18. That is not, you know, the hallmark of a wonderful family. But I still had a lot of myths about it. And then I began to recover memories. And it was quite shocking that I didn't know my own history, which meant I didn't know my own identity. And so three, three things happened when I turned 32. I recovered my memories. I realized that I needed to be, I needed to be living a lesbian life. That's, that is where my heart, my politic, my identity really lay. And, and that also I needed to be an artist.  So all those three things happened at the same time. And none of them could have happened without the other two. I mean, I was able to get my memories because I was realizing I was done with men that enabled me to access memories that would not have been useful if I was planning on having, you know, a husband. So, you know, it was a kind of red letter, just one of those. It's kind of like the before I was 32, and after I was 32. And, and also I've recently been diagnosed as autistic, and realized there was a lot of masking going on. But I think part of that was at 32, I began to really work on being authentic and authentically present. Prior to that, I had just been performing like, who am I supposed to be? What's the game? How do you play it? And I'm going to make sure that I play it really well. And all of that lost its appeal to me. And when I began to know who I was, and I began to drop the masking and all of that. So it was, and that was when I began to say I was a playwright and really dedicate myself, go back to school in theater and just dedicate my life to it. What happened? Why theater? You know, who knows? They say your thing is sort of set by age five. And I, as a young child, very autistic, I had a dollhouse of 50 dolls. And I really played dolls. And when I played dolls, I went into an altered state for six to eight hours a day. And I would enact enormous like BBC miniseries, like every doll, I could write a biography about them.  And I'm just a little kid. But I'm, you know, I look back now and I realize I was playwriting. That was, and my mother had to, in the summer, she made me pack up the dolls, because she realized this child's never going to leave a room, because I was, so I just got a set of miniature dolls. I'd go out in the woods and I would do eight hours of, I do the whole Peter Pan in the woods, you know, with the island and the, yeah, you know, now someone would have identified that as intensely autistic, literally living in my own world. But I believe that, that what I needed to do with my life was pretty set at a very early age. And then when I put the dolls away, I kind of got lost for a long time. And when I started with theater, it was like, Ah, back in the groove. Yep. How did it happen to be so prolific? It's so impressive. And I, in researching your biography, I realized that you also have chronic fatigue syndrome. So how do you get to be, how did you get to be so prolific? And how do you accommodate chronic fatigue syndrome? Well, I was stricken in 87, which was shortly after the big red letter year, the stress of that, I had to estranged from my family of birth, you know, which was very, very difficult, stressful. And I was involved in an enormous lawsuit in a whistleblowing lawsuit. And then I was trying to be this new identity. And, you know, so not surprisingly, it was, yeah, I got sick. I got a case of really bad flu. And to my shock, I never recovered. I was very, very stricken for the first seven years of it where I'd say I was 95% disabled. There were days I couldn't read, I couldn't work, I couldn't walk around the block, that kind of thing. But what it did for me was I was able to write because my energy came, when I had it, it had to catch it. I would suddenly at three o'clock in the morning, I've got some energy and I could just get up and start writing. If I'd had to have a nine to five job, you know, I was touring, that's what I was doing for money.  And I get a booking and I take a whole lot of caffeine. And I would fly out and I would do the 90 minute show, I do classroom visits, I do some lectures and workshops. And I would do that for three days and then come home and go to bed for months. And yeah, it was hard. It was really hard. And chronic fatigue syndrome was not recognized. I couldn't get on disability with it, which was terrifying. I am grateful to see that the COVID long haulers are being treated very differently. It's the same thing. It's post viral syndrome. And they will be able to get on disability. They won't have the same struggle that my age cohort has struggled with for decades. The CDC in particular pretending it was not a real disease. It must have been so hard to be just starting out as a playwright and then be stricken with this. Well, but you know, I probably would have gotten, I probably wouldn't have chose, I, if I could have done something different that made money, I would have. But I was so sick. It was the only thing I could do. And I look back and I feel like there was a certain gift in that. And the silence was overwhelming when I, you know, I was so sick. I was just, you know, alone. There would be, I realized that that period of my life, if I dropped dead, it would probably be two months before they found a body. I just, there with my life, I was, the isolation was extreme. But, you know, it certainly motivated me to write because, and it was interesting because as sick as I was, when I was writing, I never felt sick. It was almost like I dissociated. I went into an altered state when I was deep in the playwriting. And whoever was writing the plays did not have chronic fatigue syndrome. That was very interesting. I know if I had to get up and get the mail, I couldn't do that two days in a row. That was too much. But yeah, it was, it was, but it was certainly hellish. And I'm very grateful that that time is gone now because of the COVID long haulers. There can be no denying of the reality of this horrendous condition. So that's a good thing. Now on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Yeah, I do. I live, I live in a little fishing village, Southwest Harbor. And it's very, very beautiful here. And we are infested with tourists six months of the year, but the winters are very quiet, very beautiful. I feel extraordinarily fortunate to be able to live here. It's a dream come true. My question, though, is how does it work? How does your work as a playwright become possible, even though you're not in a major city? Well, I, you know, I always needed to be around nature for a number of reasons. I'm realizing a lot that was autism and my relationship to nature and so on. But I could never really live in a big city. And so I think that a lot of people saw that as a real handicap. And maybe it was in a way, but I would have been really worn down and distracted by city rhythms, you know, that kind of thing. I don't know, but I just been very blessed in the pandemic year. I had 27 Zoom productions of readings and sometimes some actual productions. I had a good experience. I got to see my work all over the country, which I'm retired now. I don't travel so much. That's very difficult to do with chronic fatigue. So that kind of the pandemic was, I had a pretty good pandemic year, I got to say. And I think it's going to change things. I do too. And I think coupled with the environmental disaster, there's no reason. And I used to feel that when people would pay all this money for me to fly out and give a one hour lecture. And I think this is, first off, it was two days of traveling for me. You know, it was like, this is insane. You know, because the technology was there to have me videotaped. And people just, it just wasn't the culture. They'd have all this money and they want to bring in the author. And now I think people are really thinking twice about that.  I like to think we will never go back to the promiscuous, especially air travel, which is a huge global warming thing, right? Kind of up there with cruise ship, and not as bad as cruise ships. But, you know, I agree with you. I think that there is no reason to have for a lot of that travel. But I worry about theater coming together in the theater. Yeah. Well, I agree with you there. And one of the things I've always encouraged lesbians to do is to, because we, many lesbians have pods, safety pods, they have people that they know are as careful as they are, and that they socialize with without masks and stuff. Get together and read a play together. You know, reading a play can be very, I find that if you read a play, you can capture a great deal of it without throwing all the production values, costumes, props, sets. You can, and sometimes those are distractions. I feel like a really good play. And many people have said Shakespeare, you'll never have as fully realized experience of Shakespeare on the stage as you will if you curl up with it, because of the brilliance of the work. You know, if you're reading it, you're not going to miss a thing. But I, yeah, I do, I would worry about live theater. However, that has never embraced lesbian culture. So I kind of feel like, oh, the pandemic, what are they going to do? Not produce lesbian plays now? And even mainstream theater has been so prohibitive and expensive. You know, it's been out of the price range for a lot of lesbians. Well, honestly, I mean, I'm old, okay? And I grew up going to theater and theater was, it was the Greeks, it was Molière, it was Shakespeare, it was Moss Hart, it was like two intermissions. And it was an evening in the theater. And generally, it was a cast of 10 to 15 or sometimes 20, you know, and big plays. And you had a big theme, like South Pacific interracial marriage, it was refracted through three entirely different subplots that all kind of woven and out of each other. And that is where I learned my craft. And my best plays, everybody knows me for this one woman show with a stool because of the economics of lesbian theater. I have some, I have some plays I've spent 18 years on, I have plays with huge casts, two intermissions.  And it's frustrating to me because the way theaters look at it is, we have a season subscribers, season subscribers, they will come see whatever we put up. So if we just have a husband and wife arguing with each other in the living room, as opposed to mounting a Molière play or, you know, whatever, or a Shakespeare God help us with cast of 23, we will save tons of money. And so theater has systematically, as with everything corporately driven, has stripped away every element of drama that's actually dramatic, the spectacle, the multiple subplots, the length and size of the evening, which includes the two intermissions, it's you are having an experience, you have to have two breaks, you are working. And that is going away with these 90 minute and do not try to have a 90 minute play with no intermission, that's really unfair to old people with bladder issues. But that is the way it's going 90 minutes with no intermission. So you can't express your disdain for what's going on by not coming back after intermission. I always find that's healthy. And two to four people, generally middle class, generally in a living room. How boring is that? And I just compare that with the Moss Hart plays or, you know, and it's not just me being old. I mean, we have 2000 years of theater that looked like that. If you ask Anton Chekhov or Morgueir to write something for two or three characters in a living room, they would just be like, I can't. I what I have to say, that doesn't interest me for starts. And the themes that do cannot be covered with those parameters. I just feel, I feel really soap boxy about that. Like, y'all don't know what live theater is because it's not being done anymore. And you realize most of the great writers, I used to feel bad that there weren't lesbian theaters. I was produced, my first theater company was in a bar. And then I remembered the greatest playwrights in the world wrote for bare stage broad daylight. It's like, don't sweat it, Carolyn. And Shakespearean actors wore their everyday clothes. They wore Elizabethan clothes, even though they're Cleopatra. It's like, you know what? You don't need that. This isn't film. This is live theater. And you'll be the better playwright for that. You can't lean into all these props. You're going to have to really, you're going to have to really make it happen, make the magic happen. Yeah, but I feel like we don't really need to throw all this money. Make a movie. You want to do that? Make a movie. We don't. Good theater just doesn't require all of that stuff.  We're getting to the end of the interview. Oh my gosh. I have a couple of quick questions. What are your current projects? I just finished a play that I really love. It's called Star Pattern. And it's based on a real woman read a star pattern. And she was on campus 1966. The University of Texas tower shooting, which was the first contemporary mass shooting. And the first victim outside the tower was an 18 year old woman, eight months pregnant. And she was wounded but not killed. And she lay on this 127 degree pavement under the tower, struggling. And nobody could rescue her because she was still in the line of fire at the sniper. It was too dangerous. Rita runs out, lies down next to her and talks to her for an hour until she's rescued and keeps her conscious keeps her from losing consciousness and saves her life. And Claire, the victim, she has given many interviews about what they talked about. And they did that thing where women in crisis who don't know each other, establish an immediate intimacy and then collaborate on creating anti patriarchal space in a crisis situation. And this was really a patriarchal inferno. This guy was just shooting dozens of people. And she's eight months pregnant. The baby's dead. Her partner is dead next to her. And here's Rita. And they go into the secret language of women. That was really clear to me listening to Claire. It's like, oh my God, they are talking in a highly symbolic secret language of women. They're doing that thing. And I have done that for women when I stopped for car accidents. And women have done that for me when I was in crisis. And I wanted to put that on the stage. And I did. And I really like the play. It's in the secret language of women. It's called star pattern. If you go on my website, you can get a download or paperback of it. But I felt like it was, it was like a, it's sort of a snapshot of the apocalypse as a short play, but it's also a template for, you know, surviving. It was like how, how much power can we have in an apocalypse? And the answer is quite a bit, quite a bit. You know, what Rita did was breathtakingly feminist. She came out as a lesbian shortly after that and went on to found a women's press and then a women's arts center that is still thriving in Austin. I think it was transformative for her. And of course it saved Claire's life. But it's a very, it's an extremely compressed play. And I, yeah. And so that's, and I have three projects right now. I'm working on that. I'm not ready to talk about yet, but I'm excited about star pattern because yeah, I just, I just did. A couple of minutes. Any last words for the audience? Oh, read, buy my plays, read my plays and consider putting together a group of a play reading group, particularly because you can do them on zoom. And I have a number of one acts that have small casts that you can do on zoom. And yeah, we've been waiting for the prince seriously for 40 years were lesbians. And we've been waiting for the queer prince. And that is way not going to happen either. You know, we, you know, we have to stop waiting for the prince. The lesbian theater prince is never going to show up. And if we don't make our own theater, we are going to be stuck with secondhand stories, which is, that's how we get colonized. That's how we can't remember who we are. So, Carol engage. Thank you for joining us. It was my pleasure. Thank you. Hi, everybody. I'd like to welcome back Bill Mathis. He was on before with his perfectly wonderful novel that I really enjoyed reading. And, and he had now has a new book called the memory tree. And here it is. And I can't tell you how, how, how like you just, it's page turners. It's just wonderfully written page turners. And so thank you, Bill for agreeing to be on again to talk to you new book memory tree. So let me tell you a little bit about Bill. And then we'll talk a little bit about a review of his book. And, but let's just tell you a little bit about who he is. Bill Mathis was raised in a large family in a small Michigan village. He moved to Beloit, Wisconsin after retiring from careers in the YMCA, camping and foster care in the Chicago area. He began writing a year after retirement and has two novels published through Rogue Phoenix Press with the third one under contract for release in 2020. Besides writing, Bill enjoys volunteering, reading and traveling with his partner. And as I learned from Bill, I knew love which is collecting art during the pandemic, which sounds perfectly delightful. So are you enjoying that? I certainly am. It's been fun. And I'm not, I'm not sure I'll leave much to my kids, but that's fine. I'm not buying, I can't afford real expensive stuff anyway. So I know. And I was, I always said, you know, I saw this bump was taken that said, I'm spending my children's inheritance. Yes.  And about your book, you have a review here about memory tree, which I will read, is a poignant novel about a dying man, his relationship with his caretaker, and his entanglements with his previously deceased family. The book is metaphor, meant a physically complex describing death as a kind of conscious, but constrained, or legious. Is that is our legious? A religious, a religious. Okay. Because it's about a are anyway. Okay. At this says of the novel, to me, memory tree encapsulates many levels of life, secrets, race, races and revenge, regrets, death, love and hope. I believe we are made from elements of stardust and return to similar elements when we die. So you've won some awards for this new book, right? Yes, this book. And by the way, this is my fifth novel. Yeah. Yeah. I probably didn't edit that other stuff close enough. But this is my fifth novel. And it won the Chicago Writers Association's took third place in their first chapter award that they offer. And the book before it revenge is necessary took first place. So they both have the first chapters are good. Well, from what I read, I think they're all good. So but this is the first chapter contest, right? Yes. Yeah, it's just the first chapter. Yeah. So how has life been for you during the pandemic? Just kind of hanging at home? Well, I was retired before it. And so life didn't change a lot. I mean, Groundhog's Day is Groundhog's Day. It did get a little boring.  And therefore, a while at the worst of the pandemic, we even ordered our groceries in. We're not doing that now. But with the, but we were fine.  We missed a couple of wonderful trips we'd planned. But, you know, that's life. And I haven't seen my daughter and grandkids in two years. But I'm certainly not alone in that factor. And we have a coffee group that met every Saturday morning locally. And we switched to Zoom. And and actually that expanded it because people who'd moved out of the area could join. And so that enriched it. We went back to personal meeting. And then with this Delta variant, we're back to part of us are back to Zoom, part of us, part of a meet live, but they go early. But it's just not worth the risk in a crowded restaurant. Yeah. So, but other than that, you know, it's been fine. It's and we collected art. And I'm sure it's given you much more time. I know for me if I tend to socialize if given the opportunity. And so without that opportunity all the time, I tend to write more myself. So I don't know whether it's having that effect on you. Well, our writer's group met in person at the library and we switched to Zoom. And we actually thought that much more productive. We just got right to it. I know because we had groups and then, you know, everybody would bring food and then you'd eat the food. But, you know, it's easier to get right to it on Zoom. So do you still keep up with your writing schedule or you have? I haven't in the last nine months. It started to slow down a year ago as I finished up memory tree. And the the issue is is 20 plus years ago, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. And it was so severe. I was off work for five years and on disability. And I gradually got somewhat better. I'll never be over it. But I got better enough to function and go back to work in a different capacity and then retired and started writing. But it started to slowly recur or get worse again over the last year. And so the last nine months I have done very little. So in some ways the pandemic's been a blessing because I couldn't do anything if I felt like it. And just the concentration and focus of writing just it isn't there right now. I think it'll come back and I have lots of ideas. But so I know. And you'll probably write it in, you know, really quickly because you've had so much time to sit on this. The idea. Right, right. And I've got a couple of things in progress. I've got a plot. That's the problem. Got these great characters with no plot. Well, you know, I think if you keep. Maybe do something about the apocalypse. Yes, yes. So when you're not writing, what do you like to read? If you couldn't be like fiction or mystery? Or I mostly read fiction. And I like sometimes I like psychological thrillers. And and thrillers. I'm trying to draw blanks at names. I just read a couple of really good ones. I was going to give the author a blog, but I got to remember a name first. It's the book is The Marsh. The Marsh King's Daughter. And it's actually being made into a movie. But it's Paula DeAnne is the author. And she has written some marvelous things. Her books are marvelous. So and then I bounce around. I read a little bit here and a little bit there. So and being a ex evangelical, I follow religious news. And I'm not sure why. But there's a lively group. But I'm not going to get into politics. Yeah, good. I mean, I could but I'm not gonna. But anyway, so you're you move you're from a large family. Does that import like the drama of I know you have a lot of LGBTQ characters in your novels, which is wonderful. But do you find that your large family in a small town kind of gave you ideas about family life or about, you know, what it is to live in a small town or yeah, I think it definitely shaped a lot of what I write because all of my books involve family. Um, and and several of them large families and and and that type of thing. And so I I have this ideal family of growing up in the fifties and sixties in a small town. And I've always looked at that as just the ideal.  But but but I realized it wasn't an ideal life. I mean, there was a lot of issues in families and I'm sure homophobia and racism were uh, yeah. Yes. Yes. So which probably a lot of us coming out. Yes. So so that's affected it. And and I think my books with families present flaws and secrets and and none of the secrets that I've shared are are personally that I know of. I don't I don't think my six siblings were or psychopaths. But it definitely shaped and and and it's been interesting to see how that plays out in my writing. Now stardust now there's an interesting concept. I know there are some people that believe that when we die we turn to stardust. So I find that really intriguing. How did you come up with having a character in the book at stardust? Oh, don't ask how my mind works. I I I liked I I my my personal belief system is is gone from being raised in a independent fundamental pastor's home pk to later in my mid 30s being a born again Christian and living in evangelicalism for 30 years. To that gradually dying and then gradually a deconstruction and eventually deconversion and process. And so I really liked Neil deGrasse Tyson's thing. We come from stardust and we return to stardust. Now all the elements of of of us originated in stardust that somehow the earth is made of. And and so I like the idea of this little girl kind of being in limbo even though I don't believe in a purgatory or a limbo but but it just it just made sense to give her this interim this interim time of of of waiting for her father to return because he didn't rescue them and he should have and they were murdered. She and her twin brother and their mother were or murdered and their dad was on the way to rescue them to save them and he didn't he never showed up. And so she's her stardust is waited in the old farmhouse all these years in case her dad comes back or shows up or so she can learn what happened. And he does he does come back. He's dying of cancer and and he's white and it kind of slowly the book slowly moves into the the racial issues. A couple friends read it and said oh we didn't realize so-and-so was black or the kids were mixed until and I said well that was kind of the design. I just kind of wanted to ease into that part. So he had been in a mixed-race relationship and his his common law wife was African-American and his kids were mixed and he had hang-ups about it. He loved his wife he loved his kids but he never took them in public any place. They would go out he would go out but they never they never went to the town ball games together. They never and he was out of town a lot he was a forester. So anyway this little girl one of the twins is a stardust and when I read I'll read the opening which kind of explains her. And and and so the nurse who comes to care for Duane the dying old man the little girl's father is African-American and and she's a true character.  And and so she works on him and gradually the reader will learn you go back into his story how he met his girlfriend common law wife and they had kids and then you'll go back into Rita the old nurse's story and and gradually they come together overlap. They never met each other but they were going to and then the story continues and then it ends it ends with the old man dying and the stardust of her father and the stardust of the little girl are together and then she realizes their stardust is actually going to become real dirt and and she wants she hopes that a pink lady slipper grows up grows from her dirt because they lived on the edge of a national forest so they spent all their time in the woods and it's a very nature-oriented book from the standpoint of enjoying the outdoors and being involved with the growth of a forest and all of that. So and then the central character is memory tree and that's the old tree in the front yard that they talk to and it kind of gives a history of of the tree and it's just kind of another character. And I believe in African American lore and I'm not sure about this but there's a lot to do with trees and memory and you know going there to pray. Yeah yeah I didn't explore that but that's that's with the ancestors I believe. Yeah yeah. Well I don't think I've ever heard of another book that shows stardust but you know I'm sure if there is we'll we'll get emails on our account saying well so you stardust but yeah but you know to my knowledge I have never heard it so I think it's a very unique and original idea. So would you like to read to our audience now and they can get a taste of your novel? Yes I would. Okay. This is from memory tree. The book opens with two poems written by friends of mine. The trees talk the trees talk all night they never sleep they hug the earth and never sleep the wind which rattles leaves does not frighten them their roots hold each other in such wind hold I tell you the trees talk all night and wait for light and that's a poem by Tom Montag who's a Wisconsin poet and very prolific. Life lasts a long time as stardust forever more now that's impressive that's a haiku sorda by Bob Wood he calls them haiku sordas. Memory tree split creek county Michigan which is a fictitious county access road 35 miles east of Lake Michigan I've been talking to memory tree for a long time ever since I could talk back when I was alive now through my stardust memory trees in my front yard and is old really old and tall really really tall we mostly called her memory because she was kind of part of the family and she remembers everything we also called the tree she mommy was glad memory wasn't called he she said men couldn't remember things very good my name is Yula and you can't see me my stardust is what's talking to memory tree yeah my stardust that's kind of like my spirit did you know dead people always stay the same age like the pictures on granny's wall old people young people want a baby they're all dead she used to tell us anyway we dead people always stay the same age we never get older my twin brother Jimmy and I were nine years and six days old the day we died I call it the bad day I bet by now granny has pictures of me and jimmy on her wall mommy too she was 29 I'm not sure about a picture of dad anyway memory knows my stardust is here all alone in the house she remembers mommy dad jimmy and granny too memory will never forget us I know that for a fact chapter one my real name is Bula but I couldn't say the B when I was learning to talk so Oula became Yula mommy said adding an H to the end of Bula made it sound too old besides I was named after granny and her name didn't have an H at the end either she wasn't old yet at least she wasn't back then some people think stardust is like spirits which are like ghosts I'm not like that ghosts and spirits can touch things or move things or spook people or animals or birds I can't it's like I'm a dandelion all white and poofy except I'm a cluster of stardust nobody alive can see I think where I want to go and somehow I'm there only I don't want to go to other places not away from the house I'm afraid to I mostly stay at the top of the archway between the kitchen and dining room I can hear and see and think I can't smell talk out loud sneeze or touch but I can remember those things I don't cry real tears but I sure remember what they were like and the pain and fear in my mind I'm telling all this to memory I always liked writing stories now it's telling them I'm just an invisible poof of stardust waiting telling my life to memory and now do you but by this me there is no oops there are no pictures of me or Jimmy hanging in our house now or of mommy even dad anywhere there used to be somewhere of mommy and us kids somewhere of me and Jimmy with dad none were with all four of us together I don't understand why the pictures are missing it would be nice to see them every day sometimes something to look at while I remember think and just exist as sawed us oops again I almost said sawed us now that would be weird I meant stardust maybe I was thinking of sawed us because dad was a woodcarver too a good one the wood carvings he made of us are also gone how would they be missing too who would sneak in and take them in the pictures how could I have not seen them do it see I've been waiting a long time in our old farmhouse for dad to come back when you're dead you don't think about time that's why I can't tell you how long I've been waiting I won't leave until my stardust meets dad's or at least I know he remembers us I don't know where else to look for him so I'm waiting here things are really scary that bad day a big angry man attacked mommy down by the lake she yelled for us to run and get dad we did we screamed for dad when we got to the house he hollered to wait on the porch he was in the shower and to pull some clothes on and get his gun he yelled he was hurrying as fast as he could he sounded upset makes out we didn't wait for him instead we ran down to the back down to the dock mommy was gone then the crazy man attacked we ended up in the lake next to mommy after dad didn't rescue us or show up jimmy stardust kept telling mine to go up to the house and wait for dad stardust mommy agreed she thought maybe dad died near the house or on the way to save us she said I was always a daddy's girl anyway so I should go mommy also said jimmy stardust would stay by hers forever and mine could be with dad's until all four of us can get to can get together she said memory tree would look over me even inside the house so I went it took a while for my stardust to get through the water the only problem was when my stardust finally got to the house dad wasn't here not him alive or a stardust I did see that the barn had burned down wouldn't dad stardust have found mine if he died in the fire how did the barn burn down it must have burned down after the bad man attacked us but how why wasn't dad here if he wasn't dead someplace around the house where did he go dad was supposed to come rescue mommy me and jimmy too dads do that rescue their family our dad never came so I'm here in the house waiting for dad waiting to learn what happened waiting for my forever to start and that ends the reading of the word all right well I'm ready I'm gonna start reading them maybe today so where can people get this book I'm sure the usual places the amazon bookstores do you have a direct place that people could buy they can buy it through amazon or any of the major online retailers their local bookstores can order it for them they'll have to prepay it but they can they can be ordered and I encourage people if they don't mind doing that to support their local bookstores if they want signed copies they can contact me the easiest way would just be through my email um bill mathis frider at gmail.com or my website is bill mathis frideretc.com so those are the simplest ways okay well you got the news get the book folks and um we'll see you again when your book when you have another new book thank you which we hope is very soon it'll be a little while I gotta figure out a plot first thanks bill thank you thank you for joining us we'll see you in two weeks but in the meantime resist