Today's webinar is an introduction to TechSoup. And while I saw many of you are brand new to TechSoup, I did also see that a few of you have been TechSoup members before, or your nonprofit is already a TechSoup member, but maybe you are picking up the relationship with TechSoup because somebody else at your nonprofit is left. So we're going to touch on those things specifically and make sure you get oriented around the pieces that are going to be most helpful to you. But I'm going to start this actually with a quick buzzword alert.  And all of us in the nonprofit world find that sometimes we have phrases and language and ways we talk about things that that may not be known to other folks that we're speaking to. So I want to quickly pull out a couple that are important in the nonprofit technology world. The first one is digital transformation. Lots of folks on this webinar probably know exactly what it is, but maybe not everybody does and you've, but you've probably heard the term bandied around in a very short way of describing it. Digital transformation is the process of making your nonprofit more technology savvy. It's moving and using digital tools, both as a way to manage your workload as a way perhaps to accomplish your mission, or as a way to simply manage staff and payroll at your nonprofit, nothing more complicated than that. A second term that you may hear during this webinar and other places around nonprofit technology groups is civil society. Civil society is really just non governmental people and organizations who are working to make a better world, right. We consider nonprofits to be part of civil society so when we talk about this broad group of people who are working outside of the government outside of politics outside of corporations themselves. Civil society is the term we use to describe that. The third one again for lots of folks this is pretty clear cloud adoption cloud adoption is really as nonprofits move towards using cloud based tools, it's nothing more complicated than that. I call these out at the front of the webinar because lots of times as I said there are terms and terminology that we assume everybody knows, but not everybody does know them so I just want to put those out there as we get going. And now into the meat of our topic today. You've joined TechSoup as a nonprofit or you're already working with TechSoup as a nonprofit. But you know, taking it to the personal realm as people in my own life ask me every day. What is TechSoup. And it's a good reason to ask that question because TechSoup is a lot of different things. But let's go over that list and kind of talk about which ones might be most important to you. First of all TechSoup is a 501c3 nonprofit organization in the United States. And globally, we are a global network of nonprofits and NGOs around the world, all trying to work together to share resources to share advice insights and help each other do the good work of building a more sustainable better planet. The good thing TechSoup is beyond just being a nonprofit and an NGO itself is a tech is an organization with a mission and our specific mission is to support nonprofits and NGOs as they work with technology to help build a more equitable planet. In other words, we have a perspective. We think that technology can help. We also know that technology can be very challenging. So TechSoup's mission is to help plug the holes and help nonprofits and NGOs understand how to use technology, which technology to use, and what options there are in the marketplace for them. The third thing that TechSoup is, particularly on that front is a catalog of affordable technology products from major technology brands like Microsoft, Dell, Intuit, Adobe, and many, many more. Part of what we decided at the early onset of TechSoup's formation is that we needed to help nonprofits actually get the affordable deals on tech products that really make them usable in the real world. After all, if things are extremely expensive and a tool is out of reach for that reason, then you have to find other ways to work with it. We think that we can help nonprofits by providing affordable access to technology tools. But in the modern world, as we all know, getting access to a tech tool is not enough anymore. There's a certain amount of expertise that has to come with that to help choose the right tools, to implement and deploy those tools, and then to manage them. One of the big new areas that TechSoup has been working to provide nonprofits are services which stand next to the tools we offer through the catalog, services to help you choose, install, and manage the software and hardware that your nonprofit relies on. And then finally, we also know that education and training is a key part of making technology more usable and accessible to nonprofit staff, to nonprofit board members, and to nonprofit volunteers. In addition to the catalog of technology we offer, in addition to the services that we offer, we also offer courses and trainings to help nonprofit staff and volunteers and board members become more digitally able so that they can understand the tools you have access to, and just enhance your technology skills.  We run our own programs using grant-based funding, just like you do, where we write to funders and philanthropy organizations and philanthropists, and we propose ideas and we apply for grants and we win some, we don't win them all, everybody knows what that's like. But we do have our own programming that we run using those grants, and almost always of course it's around technology, technology adoption, and helping civil society bring technology in to solve big problems. So already you can see technology and TechSoup is a very complicated thing actually. We have a lot of different areas that we touch nonprofits and that we try to help. And so hopefully this gives a little broader perspective on all the different roles that TechSoup plays. So now let's go a little bit deeper into how those roles are helpful to you in your work as a nonprofit, regardless of what your mission is.  We have very different books that we have to run, our revenue streams and budgeting processes are very different than for-profit organizations. And so one of the first things that's important to call out here is that since we are a 501c3, that means we understand those budget cycles and those revenue parameters that other nonprofits have to work with. And that's important because plenty of businesses can offer services and other technology items but they may not fully understand the financial picture of nonprofits but we do because we are one. And as I said, we believe technology can help you. And we believe that that's true, not just here in the United States, but globally. And we work with other nonprofits and NGOs around the world to make that happen. And as I've already mentioned, we do believe that cost can be a major blocker for nonprofits. And that's why the catalog that I mentioned a few minutes ago is a place where we have negotiated with corporations and companies who want to do good in the world. We want to share the technology products that they've built and we work with them to negotiate pricing for nonprofits so that you can save some money on the front end and be sure to have the resources available to, you know, implement that technology and manage it over time. Some of our own studies internally of nonprofits say that nonprofits that have worked with us for a long time on their tech needs have saved over $18,000 in their lifetime membership. That number shifts a bit because technology costs different amounts of money in different parts of the world and of course it's different now that it was 20 years ago and TechSoup has been around for a few decades now. But it is to say that nonprofits that have worked with us for a long time really can save quite a bit of money by working with TechSoup. And finally, we do believe that that education and training is another blocker and that's why we provide that to nonprofits. Now let's talk about the TechSoup catalog specifically because this is a place where most nonprofits come to us first. They've heard that TechSoup has offers in a catalog from these different technology brands. And now you've joined TechSoup, you've become a member, you're authorized to use the catalog. But how does the catalog work? What's in there? That's what we're looking at now. So this is the TechSoup website I have up on the screen. It's a techsoup.org in the United States. And there's two very quick, easy ways to get to that product catalog. I've got them both circled in red here. Should be fairly obvious on the page. You just click those links and you're going to take you straight into the actual catalog of what we've got available. And I'm going to highlight a few of the specific offers that we find most nonprofits really gravitate toward. They form some of the most popular and common offers that nonprofits take from TechSoup. The first one is Microsoft. And of course, if you are running a PC and you're using Windows or you're using Office, you're using Microsoft products. And it is by far the largest partner that TechSoup has worked with for decades now. And at the moment, there are a few specific offers from Microsoft that are worth highlighting. One is Microsoft 365, which is the cloud-based Microsoft Office, basically. Think of the suite of programs, Excel, Word, Outlook, those kinds of things that have usually come bundled.  Remember back in the day when that was the medium of choice in which you got software. But now, of course, it's all downloaded directly from the internet. But TechSoup works directly with Microsoft and we help nonprofits choose and implement Microsoft Office 365 solutions every day. And our friend Kevin Mulhall also on the call here with the customer success team will go into those a little bit more in a little bit. If you're not using Microsoft's cloud-based offers, you're still using Office on-premises, which means you're just loading it onto a single computer. We do have those products available as well from Microsoft. And then finally, the third one that everybody knows about probably is Windows 11. That is now the standard for what you would be running on a PC. And you can get the Windows 11 Pro full operating system through TechSoup. And you can also get the upgrade of the Windows 11 operating system through TechSoup. Another partner that we find is extremely popular with nonprofits, especially if you're engaged in a communications role where you have to do design or graphics in particular is Adobe. I've been a big user of Adobe products for most of my career in technology. I love working with design platforms. I have really loved working with Adobe's products for many, many, many years. I've made a movie with them. I've designed numerous brochures. And they are one of the most popular items in the catalog. Creative Cloud is the central piece of Adobe's offer. It is the well-known suite of different tools such as Dreamweaver, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, and many, many, many more. If you are a communications director at your nonprofit or if you have a specific designer or communications person, these Adobe offers are really something that they'd be very interested in knowing about. Another part of the Adobe catalog that's standalone is Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. Adobe invented the PDF, right? That document that we all now share online. That's an invention from Adobe. And Acrobat Pro DC is the cloud-based software that really has the most power around these PDFs. You can create PDFs, you can edit them, you can lock them so that they're secure and uneditable. And from looking at the types of nonprofits that use Adobe products from TechSoup in particular, I have noticed over time that nonprofits that do a lot of legal work in particular tend to really gravitate towards Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. And then a new offer in the catalog from Adobe just within the last month is called Adobe Express. I haven't used Adobe Express yet, but at the moment it is actually free in our catalog. And as I understand it, it's a scaled down but very powerful version of Creative Cloud. So if you don't need the entire Creative Cloud suite, Express may actually offer the communications tools that your nonprofit would be able to use, perhaps with a lower bar for expertise and training on that. There are also Creative Cloud for education teams, memberships available through TechSoup. That's a more sophisticated offer, but again for a larger nonprofit which is working with teams, that's possible as well. Intuit QuickBooks is another extremely popular offer from TechSoup that nonprofits take advantage of all the time. QuickBooks Online Plus in particular and Online Advanced are the two that nonprofits gravitate towards right now. And I should say that you're going to receive a copy of this slide deck that I'm sharing on screen at the end of this webinar and all these underlying links will work in the document. So if you are thinking about Intuit QuickBooks for your nonprofit in particular, I'm going to call out this QuickBooks Online FAQ. It's a great resource for you to click into and check in on whether or not QuickBooks Online is something that your nonprofit ought to be using. So those are not the only brands available in the TechSoup catalog. There are dozens of other brands, but I wanted to highlight those in particular because they are three of the most popular. But as you can see here, there are several other brands that are also available, stuff that you very well know, DocuSign, Norton, Asana, AWS. One thing to be aware of is that some of the offers in the TechSoup catalog, and Kelly Garrett will touch on this a little bit later, do have some limits based on the size of your nonprofit or on the mission type of your nonprofit. So it's always good to keep that in mind. And when you're looking at a product in the TechSoup catalog that you might think your nonprofit should use, you should be aware to check the eligibility restrictions that may exist for that nonprofit. But as again, Kelly will touch on that. Hardware is another place where TechSoup is playing an active role helping nonprofits afford technology, right? So software is one thing, but we need the machines to run all of it. And of course, we're all well aware that over the last two and a half years under COVID, the supply chain issues that have impacted the availability of hardware and the cost of hardware have both been significant. TechSoup offers several different abilities to gain access to hardware products from us. We have both new and refurbished lines of laptops and desktops and we also provide access to servers, networking products, internet hotspots and headsets, all available through the TechSoup catalog, again priced at a level to make them affordable for nonprofits so that you don't have to spend all your money just getting new hardware. In terms of like three that are particularly well known brands of hardware companies that we work with that provide new items through TechSoup. Dell, Lenovo and HP are extremely popular brands with nonprofits in the TechSoup catalog. And again, once you get this deck after the webinar, you will be able to click straight through to these and take a look at what's available. JourneyEd is another hardware brand that we work with that has lots of opportunities to get mice and smaller pieces of hardware. And then finally, as I mentioned, we do have access to refurbished hardware. These are not brand new computers, but they're newer computers that have gone through a whole process of making sure that they're still functioning that everything's working correctly. And usually it's a great place where you can actually save some money. If you don't want to spend the cost of a brand new laptop, you may be able to find a refurbished laptop that's a year or two older than a brand new one at a very affordable rate through our refurbished hardware catalog. To get to the hardware catalog, you'll actually need to click through to the product catalog, and then the hardware dropped out the hardware menus on the left there. A little bit hard to find unless you know that right off the bat. So I'm just calling it out in this slide here. All right, now, as I said, beyond just providing access to software and hardware. TechSoup also understands very clearly that nonprofits need more support than just here are a bunch of products now go do what you will. Over time it's become clear that there is a big market and a big need for services to support nonprofits as they choose software and hardware that they need as they implement it and you know integrate it with their existing systems. And then finally manage it over time make sure that updates are applied to it properly configurations are made when they're needed. And so we have a suite of different services that we now offer to nonprofits to help with those technology questions. There are several different ones and this line of services is always evolving as we realize there are more needs out there. But to see quickly which services are available from TechSoup you would just go to the services drop down in the main menu on the home page. And you can kind of go through those and see if any of them are of particular need or interest to your nonprofit. The digital assessment tool the very first thing there is an interesting tool where you can go through and click and answer some questions that will help you actually evaluate your nonprofits digital maturity. Helpdesk is a quick way to get one off help on particular things. Office 365 here is a service that we offer for folks going to the Microsoft product. Managed IT is for a larger long term commitment where you really want help managing your, your technology stack website services and digital marketing or very core communications functions that TechSoup can support you with. And then TechSoup courses in particular as I mentioned earlier opportunity for training and education for your staff your volunteers your board members. I'm going to skip over boost and consultant connection for now. The helpdesk service is $35 a month or $350 annually for unlimited support on one specific device so if you're a very small nonprofit and perhaps only have one computer that you really need help with that would be the option there. The Office 365 email and data migration service is how we can help your nonprofit implement Office 365 and get your email plugged into it properly, so that it's pulling down your inbox and you're able to use it. There's also remote office standard or pro installation support so if you're using the on premises version. You can get help with that as well. Managed IT as I mentioned is the enterprise level systems management, which means like if you're a larger nonprofit you want help managing the whole technology stack. Then that is a place where you can get that help. And then as I mentioned the digital assessment tool can help you kind of understand what your nonprofits level of digital maturity is. All right, website and digital marketing services. We help with evaluations security and developments. But the main thing I think that is most important to call out here is that over the last several years as we've surveyed nonprofits it's become super clear to me in my role that technology as a communications tool specifically is one of the most important parts where nonprofits want help and need help. And so, perhaps you're not looking at an Office 365 implementation and instead you're like, ah, we just need help with our website. Those are services that tech soup can also provide and so I'd encourage you to reach out to us and fill out an intake form and start having a conversation about how we could help with your site. And then if it's more that you want help with figuring out how to run your outbound email program. We can help with those kinds of things as well. And finally, we're also pioneering at the moment a Google ad grants service. As many of you probably know, Google does provide nonprofits with up to $10,000 in an online grant so that you can use the Google ads platform for your nonprofit. It's a great offer, but lots of nonprofits struggle with exactly what they should do with that how they should implement it and how it works. So we are pioneering a service at the moment to help nonprofits figure that out. Now let's be totally clear. The services aren't free. It's not the case that you can just call tech soup and for zero money get all the detailed help that you need, but the services don't cost what you would probably expect to pay at a large corporation or a large consulting firm. And they are really designed to work specifically with nonprofits. So while they cost money, again, our goal is to make this stuff affordable for nonprofits so that you can use the technology to accomplish your mission. Tech soup courses is a pretty important part of our offer as well. Just showing you here in the menu again where that is. And tech soup courses is a little interesting because it requires a separate login so when you go to the tech soup courses platform you need to set up another sign in. Sorry about that. I know it's a little awkward but you know what most people do it no problem so I'm just saying if if you go to take tech soup courses or look at them you'll want to set up that separate account. But there are an awful lot of different great opportunities to learn all sorts of different technology topics there we have a very robust set of courses that we've worked in partnership with Microsoft on. If you just feel like it's education that you need right now more than you need an actual product. I encourage you to go check out tech soup courses, see if there's a track of courses in there that maybe answers the questions that you have. You know, like many learning environments these courses are structured as 100 level 200 level 300 level, or an easier terms there's like beginners, intermediate and advanced. Most of the beginner courses are free of charge. They are designed really to bring people up to speed. Once you get into the intermediate and the advanced level courses. You're not lost with many of those courses but again, specifically priced because we know that nonprofits need this help. We don't want to break anybody's bank or break anybody's budget. They're designed to be affordable so that you can get access to the information and knowledge that you need. So let's talk a little bit about what some of those are. We've had over 70,000 learners come through those courses we do have bilingual English and Spanish courses in there although honestly not all of them are that at the moment but we're trying super hard to make that more so. And as I said they're all designed specifically for nonprofits and the great advantage to these courses is anyone can sign up. So your staff your volunteers board members anybody working with your nonprofit can sign up. And as I said there are an awful lot of different topic areas and once you get this deck, just click through this link here. It will take you into what those different options what those different course tracks and topic areas are. And the Microsoft digital skills center in particular is something we've worked with Microsoft to develop so if you need better Excel skills or you're trying to figure out how to do something in Word or outlook that's where you want to go. Here's an example. This is called the nonprofit foundational skills track. And as you can see it's a series of 101 and 201 courses. They make you through a whole different series of digital skills from project management to advanced Excel. I think we all had a lot to learn in the last two years about how to organize and manage remote work teams. Fundraising is always a top top top topic for nonprofits looking to build skills. And then grants writing and management, you know, kind of linked quite directly there with fundraising itself. Nowadays, you know that if you're talking with supporters or potential users of your nonprofit services, you have to have an email marketing stack, you have to be talking to people through email itself. As I mentioned also, Google ad grants are a thing that many nonprofits are working to figure out how to use better. There's even tech planning and cybersecurity offices and this is all just one track of learning through the tech super courses platform so if those topics sound interesting as if you and your staff could learn something from them I encourage you to check that out. I'm going to pivot into a little more detail on the Microsoft cloud sections and we're going to invite Kevin Mulhall to come up from the customer success team and talk about the Microsoft cloud opportunities. But I also want to say I know that we've already gone through in the last 30 minutes, a lot of content and I do see quite a bit of questions and activity and chat that's a great place to be asking these questions. And Kelly and Kevin are incredibly skilled at quickly steering folks towards the resources that they probably will find most helpful so keep asking those questions in chat. And I'll ask Kevin to come up off of mute, and we can talk a little bit more about Microsoft cloud. Nick, were we going to grab some of those questions in advance or did you just want me just to get right into it. Just go right into it. Hey, perfect. Thank you again Nick. That's a pleasure to be speaking with you all today. Again, my name is Kevin Mulhall. I'm a technical customer success manager here at TechSoup. For those of you joining us today. I've heard of my team. That's completely understandable. As we just recently celebrated what I'd like to call our first birthday. I'll have some additional items regarding our team momentarily. Before beginning though, I'd like to start with a quick poll question. Rita, if you have the ability to spin that up. Give me one second. I just got it. Thank you. So the question you'll see popping up in your screen momentarily. Out of curiosity, is your organization currently using Microsoft or Office 365. When it does appear there's no obligation of course to answer. We'll give about a minute or two to see where everybody's at these. This is always exciting to see. I think our last. Our last session it was. Yeses were like around 67%, which I found actually kind of low. It was very, very curious to see where we're at here now. We'll give it about 10 more seconds here. Looks like most of the answers have come in. Perfect. Okay. 80%. Wow. Okay. So this group is a little bit more familiar with that. So some of the things I may be saying you may already be familiar with. So we're going to go ahead here and onto this onto this next slide. Speaking to Microsoft Cloud offers. Here we have a breakdown of the various 365 subscription types. Beginning with web only offers such as Microsoft business basic. Which is free up to 300 users for full time, part time or contract employees, as well as vendors. If you have volunteers that are needing to access licenses, specifically Microsoft has what's called the F1 or F3 or frontline license for supporting your organization in that capacity. For the sake of time. I'm not going to dive into all of the rest of the items one by one that you see here. But I do want you to be aware that 365 exists and what we'll call two flavors. Web only or hybrid a web only license is what it kind of implies is that you can only access the application or application stack through the internet. The hybrid license. An example of that would be the Microsoft 365 business premium or the office 365 E3 license provides you an office 365 desktop entitlement. A lot of words a lot to understand basically what that is is the office suite that you've known and loved and have probably used for years or even decades is actually included as part of your subscription. What about that is the installation process does not involve an answer file, which for those that are still using the on premise version. That's the thing that you're probably have become familiar with through the office deployment toolkit. That's gone. It's the old MSI click to run. It's super simple super easy to get set up the only thing that you need to make sure that you have in place is a business or professional version of windows windows 10 windows 11 operating system on the device. So, getting down really quickly to the last part here. Some of you may be familiar with power BI, an excellent analytical tool, and then Microsoft Azure. I wanted to spend a little bit more time just talking about this, then going into license by license because for those of you that may not be familiar Azure has a grant program. The grant itself is $3,500 yearly. There's over 200 different services available as part of Azure. I'm personally Azure certified. So I probably know most of them. And it's pretty incredible what you can do if you understand Azure services, things like backups file storage, even application development for those that maybe have a higher technical environment. It's an incredible tool. I am a big fan of Azure. I think it's definitely worth applying for and looking into if you haven't. Next slide. Okay. So for those that are interested, I think it would get it was like around 20% to begin the journey toward accessing Microsoft cloud solutions for your organization. There's a three step process. You can see the three dots here are the three numbers with the circles that kind of illustrates what's going to be done here. So just going over them kind of quickly. The first thing you'll need to do is to create an account at the Microsoft nonprofit portal. Next, you'll need to have that account validated by our validation service team. This is a service we provide for Microsoft on the back end. And it typically takes between five to seven business days. Please note that it can take longer. But typically the process if done correctly moves rather smoothly. And the final part of the process is what we refer to as introducing the TechSoup cloud manager or cloud manager tool within an authorized user account. Introducing this tool will allow access to the storefront where you'll be able to begin purchasing licenses. Thanks a lot. And we want you to know that if you find yourself stuck in any part of this process. We have a team at the ready to assist by email or even chat support which is highlighted here in the bottom right corner to assist at any part of the process wherever you identify that you need help. Again, understanding that the move to the cloud can be a challenge for organizations. We do offer a free consultation service through our CSP channels during a session. We'll be able to assist with registration, choosing the appropriate subscription license provide recommendations for services and courses license implementation and ongoing support to you at no cost. One a really quick thing that I didn't have on my notes but I do want to add is that we have this awesome thing called advanced support for partners. It's actually something we pay for and you get to benefit for for absolutely free and the next slide please. And so as I promised, I just put together just something really quick to introduce myself a little bit more and an overview of what my team does. As part of this whole makeup here with surrounding cloud and technology services for the sake of time. I've broken it down into five general areas. First, technology review and planning. Organizational strategy. Identifying opportunities for potential financial and volunteer support. Engaging manage support projects and services, alluding to earlier to what Nick had mentioned about our managed partner providers, and then providing quotes and invoices for bulk product requests. So with that, I am going to hand this back over to either you Nick or Rita. Great. Thanks Kevin. I want to reiterate what Kevin's team is the customer success team. And really what that means is it's tech soups dedication to making sure nonprofits get out of this, what it is they need. We are most invested in your success the whole point of our mission is to help you with technology and so Kevin's team is a central piece of that and thanks again Kevin great to have you today. And the actual part of this is our client services team and I'm super excited to bring in Kelly Garrett, who has worked with tech soup nonprofits for years now helping them get the questions answered that are central to keeping things clear and so Kelly come off mute and I'm going to go away here and take it away. Everybody, I'm Kelly, I am the associate manager of the client services department here at tech soup. The client services is basically customer service but we do a bit more than that we help with account management, we help with the qualification of your organization. Basically making sure you, you know, you've all probably gone through this at this point, making sure you have your 501 C three nonprofit status, or the proper status you need for your library, double checking your organization type. We also provide limited support for the products that are available on our tech soup catalog. We are not it trained and we are not in depth product train but we are trained to answer some basic questions. Help point you kind of in the right direction of something you might be looking for and answer general questions about programs and what tech soups doing things along those lines. So when you do contact customer service you are talking to the client service department you're talking to my team. And we are really excited and really enthusiastic to help you, most of us, you know, got into this field because we love nonprofits, we love helping nonprofits. So whenever you contact us, we are always doing our best to make sure you're able to fulfill your mission and get your vision seen as well. Perfect. So Nick, if you mind going the next slide. Awesome. So something I do like to go over before we go into how you can get support from us is pointing out where you can find information on our website www.techsoup.org. This is where you manage your account. This is where you add products to your cart or you access access a validation token, which allows you to access portals off of our website Google for nonprofits for example uses validation tokens that you can use to get going with a Google for nonprofits account. Things along those lines. One of the biggest things that we get contacted about is asking about product information because someone wasn't able to find it on our website so I literally like to point out. There are always going to be three tabs on every product page so say you search the product on our website or you go to that donor or company drop down the top right or top left corner my right some left. The top left corner there underneath tech soup you'll see donor company, you'll see category and you'll see hardware. These are great places to go to get started to try to find, you know, I know that I like Adobe I don't know what Adobe products are offered. You'll see a donor company drop down. You're looking for graphic design things or website management. You can go to the category drop down. So that's a great place to kind of get started and once you find a product you're interested in you click on that product that pulls up this product page. And on the product page you try to list as much detail as possible to really help your organization, make the right choice on which product or service you're interested in. For example, this is the quick books online plus product page and you'll see highlighted are the three different tabs. We have description on the left. We have subscription details in the middle, and we have rules eligibility and restrictions on the right. Usually, on the left, the description is where it will always start. And that's usually a great place to find answers to most of your questions so if you if you were able to scroll down this screenshot. You'll see there's a lot of breakdowns. A lot of the questions that people were asking in the Q&A about like functionality and what applications were like included with Creative Cloud things like that. You always kind of find that information listed there on that left description tab. The middle tab is really great to go look for more details about the product or the subscription or the access to discount rates. For products that aren't subscription based, you'll usually see it say details. On service costs. And you'll go in there and you can check, you know, use their system requirements are listed in there. You can see, you know, if it is a subscription product, can existing subscribers apply this to their existing commercial or retail account. Some partners allows to do that. Some partners don't. And usually it just has to do with how their systems work. They want to work with everybody, but if they system can apply a nonprofit billing code, and they ask you to start a new account to kind of get access to certain products. So always really important that description and tab on the left and then the middle tab, which can kind of change names in the middle there. Those two are the ones I highly recommend always thoroughly, thoroughly reading it answers most of your questions. It usually has a great breakdown of costs. Let's you know if it's a one time fee if it's going to be an annual fee. For example, QuickBooks online here is an annual fee paid to TechSoup $75 per year. There's no additional costs to into it unless you want to get an add on product like quick, like payroll. So that's all details here we have a link on this page to our FAQ which Nick highlighted earlier, highly recommend anyone interested in QuickBooks online products, really great FAQ we've got that really breaks things down. This is also one of those products that you know you can't apply this to an existing QuickBooks online account you do have to start a new one. But we do have in our FAQ the instructions on how you can transfer your data from your commercial account to your new nonprofit nonprofit discounted account. So, those are the two main tabs left and middle, then we also have this tab on the right the rules eligible and restrictions. This one is more comes up when you're having issues out like trying to check out with the product from your cart. Basically, our partners and TechSoup have different restrictions and rules some partners have a rule where you can only request a certain number of products per year. QuickBooks for example are into it for example only allows to request one QuickBooks product per fiscal year, which is July 1 through June 30. So that means with QuickBooks online you would get the initial subscription and then you'd use your quantity allotment once a year to renew that product. And that's again usually detailed in the middle tab when you have the subscription details. So if you're trying to check out and you're like why isn't it letting me check out with three of these. A lot of times it's a great idea to go check that rules eligibility and restrictions. It will highlight if there's any restrictions on the quantity allotment it will highlight restrictions on some organization or some partners don't don't look into donating or discounting products over a certain budget location can be a factor. Lots of different things so once you're qualified with TechSoup and you're trying to access products just keep that in mind. It's a good idea to check if you're eligible based on a ton of different types of restrictions and eligibility requirements that are put forth by our partners. So to put a caveat to that our partners would love to help everyone out there, but a lot of them have to you know budget how many keys or licenses or accesses that they're doing per their own fiscal year. And so they do sometimes put a cap on how many they provide to us so it makes them have to narrow their focus on maybe working with certain types of organizations or certain organizations with under a certain budget. So it's not a common on what you do or how you do it. It's just them narrowing their philanthropic focus to meet their own goals. So, always like to throw that out there just in case you ever run into something like why can't I check out. It's just based on how they've set up their program and what types of organizations and budgets locations are looking to work with at this time. What you have to do is that if you're US based but you have operations outside the US, you cannot request products for your non US based organizations. You will want them to go to our partners in their country we do have partners in pretty much every country around the world that's not embargoed, and that's where your location outside the US can go, get registered, get qualified under that eligibility requirements for nonprofit status things like that and then they'll be able to access that directly there. So there is an option out there for your branch locations outside the US but something to keep in mind. This is US based only a lot of these products won't work outside long term of the US. Awesome. And then. Next slide please. Another place I like to point out how to navigate the website is how do you get to our help resources. So in the top right corner there I've got a little air pointing to it there is a help button. So when you click on that help button it will take you to our help page. This is where you can go through our top top or help topics that you'll see it automatically opens on. So click that blue frequently asked questions to switch over to our FAQ, and you'll see then below there there's a different pathways for different types of support. You know if you're looking to partner with us in a PR sense there's a way to connect with our PR team. There have our fax machine if you need to faxes any documents for security things along those lines. If you're looking for customer service support though to talk to client services that's when you're going to click on contact us and that will take you to this next page. Perfect so on this next page it's our contact us page. There's three ways you can get in touch with us. We have our contact us form that you fill out that will come to our cues and within three to five business days client services will get back to you. We also have a phone number that is available at the bottom of this page that is available from 7am Pacific Standard Time to 12pm Pacific Standard Time. So if you've missed that window, you might want to submit a contact us form, or we have a brand new support feature our chat support that's available on most website pages for tech soup dot org and it's that little orange blur that's in the bottom and that's usually available from I believe my next slide has the exact time so I believe it's seven to four Pacific Standard Time that that's available so if you miss our phone hours you can still talk to someone live via that chat option or if it's an on urgent issue and you just want to get some more information maybe the contact us form is the best option for you. So again, it can take us a couple business days get back to you. We are a nonprofit ourselves. And sometimes we have rushes you know we're trying our best to get back to folks and we appreciate everyone's patients with the emails. We usually get back to three to five business days. Next slide please. So I've got here again the hours of sitting out so we are in the office. We're in the office since we're mostly remote. So I put quotes around that, but client services is usually available Monday through Friday unless you know like it's upcoming weekend we have Labor Day weekend so we won't be in the office on Monday. But we will have usually Monday through Friday people manning our phones chats and answering emails chat as I mentioned is 7am to 4pm Pacific Time phone support which I've listed the phone number there. Again is from 7am to 12 and then contact us form is usually three to five business days. Something to keep in mind with client services I kind of touched on at the beginning when I opened my presentation is that we are not tech support. What we can assist you with is managing your tech super counts information along those lines login issues you want to update your budget you need help reviewing what you know some information that you think might need to be updated things like that we can help you with eligibility questions as I mentioned before there is. There can be it's not every partner but there can be restrictions on your organization type budget location things like that so we can answer questions about that we can also always do a fresh review. If you think that it's not accurate we're happy to look that over for you and give you a determination on if it needs to be updated, or if it is good to go. We do periodic reviews so we try to you know make sure we're catching what you're doing now and not what you did like five years ago, but you know what you can always reach out to us if you'd like a fresh review and have it looked at. Thank you for helping navigate resources and with requesting products on our website techs you've.org something to keep in mind is that we have a ton of partners with a ton of products, and we're not tech support so we're not really able to make official recommendations because we're not familiar with your hardware with what software you've got installed with what's going on so that's when you want to go look at those it services that Nick highlighted earlier. So if you're in a presentation form you can go to get started with and get that remote it or tech support from one of our tech support partners. So that kind of highlights but I was going to say is what can we not assist you it it support and product support if you're having trouble downloading installing the pro software is not working all of a sudden. That's a question for the partner that created the product so if Adobe your Adobe products not working. That's when you want to go Adobe for support. If your online wasn't working, you'd want to go to into it for support, etc, etc. Same thing goes for in depth product functionality questions. We have so many partners with so many products that it's really impossible for our team which is not that large to become experts in every single product offered. The same product that's on available on the commercial retail market so it's really easy just to contact the partner that created it so if you have questions about how does QuickBooks online work and our FAQ doesn't answer your questions and our product page doesn't answer your questions. Go back to into it and ask them hey can you give me a rundown of some of the features I'm looking into. Just wanted to highlight where we help and where we can't help because we just don't have that training. Nobody wants me installing their office on their computer. Most of my tech support ability is turning my computer off turning it back on clearing my cashing cookies in my browser, and then I reach out for our own help desk support so just keep that in mind that we're here to support your account answer some basic questions highlight where you can find things really in depth or product support or it support related you're going to want to go to an it support specialist, or you're going to want to go to the partner that created the product and provide the product to their nonprofit program on tech students website. Perfect, and that's, I believe that's my last slide here. Um, so I'm sure we will talk to you soon my team client services if you ever reach out, it will be us and we look forward to assisting you. Great, thank you so much, Kelly and thanks everybody who joined our webinar today. We've got a couple of minutes before the top of the hour again and I know once again that we covered an awful lot during the last hour. And I really want to just bring it all back for everybody like in a very simple way again to say, just just please remember that at the core of all of this tech soup is a nonprofit just like you. And our mission is to help you use tech to do whatever it is that you're trying to do. I think what's really amazing about tech soup as an organization and I've been working here for several years is that, despite working in technology, it's profoundly human centered. It's very much about real people helping other real people. And so if you have questions about the technology you think you should be using, or about the technology perhaps that you already own. The best thing tech soup can for sure do is get you headed in the right direction, engage with us, ask us some questions through that contact form Kelly was asking about, use the chat feature. Check around the site to see if there are products on there that would be helpful to your organization. And if you have questions, just reach out. The other thing that could happen is that we say we don't know.  But that's very different than the experience you'll have, you know, trying to reach out to a giant global technology corporation, which may have, you know, 30 or 40,000 people at any moment in time writing in and asking questions all at the same time. We're here to serve nonprofits. So if you have questions and you need help, we're going to do our best to serve you so please engage with us use the features that we covered today in the website. And as Aretha said, we'll be sharing this deck in a follow up email to all of you who attended today. There are lots of live links in the deck that will take you straight to the place on the site that you're trying to get to to look at, you know, for instance, quick books or help desk, etc. So use those links. Check out the offers on the site. And once again, I really appreciate all of you joining us today. Watch out for the email with the deck in it and we'll take it from there. Have a great day. Bye bye.


I in the morning thank you for staying with us remember we you can communicate with us on our social media handles at y to five four across all social media platforms using the hashtag W say W or Y in the morning if you like you can get me at Stephanie I yet across all social media platforms we have now come to the second conversation of the day and we are talking about reproductive health especially matters fertility and I am joined by experts we have reproductive health nurses from my right please introduce yourself hello good morning my name is Alice Agutu I'm a nurse by profession today we are going to talk about reproductive health nurse because as part of my expertise I'm also a reproductive health nurse I deal with fertility all right to my father's right okay my name is Lillian Avula and I'm also a reproductive health nurse so we are here today to talk about reproductive health both for men and women so let's start with you you know we can say reproductive health but maybe someone doesn't understand what it is so tell us what is reproductive health reproductive health basically is what entails among females and males this is the situation where we want to know if you can be able to to be able to be fertile if you're fertile if you're healthy enough so that we help you to go through this phase so you find reproductive health affects both male and female so we are here to expound on that because it's actually quite wide and it involves a lot of things here and there so we are here to at least make some clarification of the same because we know in our nation and also worldwide there are a lot of people who are affected by the same so we are here to give actually to give some more insight about this rating their awareness yes yes okay so what is the Alice what is the significance of reproductive health you know the knowledge what should we know about reproductive health okay I think every woman would want to be a child someday and that's why you should know about your reproductive health because as we mature from girls to puberty to being women we need to plan on how we can make these babies so we are here to talk normally about age and fertility so we are going to take you through from the time you were born as a woman when you got to puberty when you become now in the reproductive age when you're supposed now to give birth and when now you're supposed to retire maybe menopause and not take care of your children so you're going to dwell on that brackets in both women and men too all right so you can tell us you know what are some of the measures first before you get into it that you can take as a country to improve you know our reproductive health standards as a country what I can suggest is we start educating people as early as when they in their puberty age both the male and female we educated and enlightened them and tell them like once you get to that phase of now you need to start to producing what are the measures that you can take to help make the bodies prepared and what can we do to just keep ourselves in that mood keep ourselves in that space of like yeah we are ready and everything at least will go smoothly so I guess as a country is all about education telling people as early as they can and also we just try to you know pass a message tell a friend to tell a friend like yes this thing can start early and we can yeah we can do this as a country so now tell us Alice what is fertility because you know it's easy to say this this person is in fertile this one so what exactly is fertility is it not being able to give birth completely is it having difficulties in giving birth birth tell us about it okay everyone is born fertile one we are born with all our reproductive system intact but as time goes by as we mature our bodies adapt to changes environmental changes mostly and also our personal life so you might find with time we can we can have problems just like a normal human being you can have malaria today tomorrow you can have tuberculosis the same also in fertility can fit in your body so once once once it comes you'll you'll you'll realize maybe at your puberty maybe you didn't get your you didn't start your menstrual cycle as all the other girls started maybe all the other girls started when they were in standard eight you you didn't start you are in form three you are seeing nothing maybe your breasts are not growing your hips are not broadening and you're not getting the science of puberty when you're at that point you can start considering maybe there's something wrong with me so like those are just the few cases but as when we talked when we when we get into detail into fertility into into into infertility it's when maybe you're you're between the between the age of 25 to 30 you should comfortably get a baby and 25 to 30 you should comfortably get a baby when you want between 30 to 35 you can try for an ear if it doesn't come within an ear you can consider seeing a gyna or a fertility specialist when you're between age 35 to 40 and you try for six months and you're not getting results I think by then you can start and question questioning yourself can I see a doctor then when you are from the age 40 and above because that's that's where we are we are moving towards menopause when you want to get a baby I think the first thing you should do is consult a doctor first so that you start on the on the right path so my what I'm saying is infertility can get you between in between these ages and when you see any sign and sign and symptoms just try and consider seeing an infertility specialist yeah you've spoken about fertility mostly in women yes Lillian tell us about infertility or fertility in men infertility in men varies a lot you know in our African society we always think like when you talk about infertility we always think about the woman exactly we always forget like for you to also get pregnant you also this need this male the man yeah the man contributes yeah because you see like when when when you want to get pregnant you need an X or X chromosome or an X and Y chromosome for you to get either a boy or a girl so that means this man is very vital in the reproductive process so we have men who actually have have different problems and they really they're really cushioned down in the in the cocoon fearing to come and talk about it because we find some can be maybe genetically maybe they're born maybe without like the test is you know the test is so in so now you're saying someone can be infertile from birth yeah we have some who can be infertile from birth in the sense of maybe they have a birth defect you know if maybe like let's say the man maybe the test is did not descend at birth or maybe the man was born without remember this is something that you cannot control so if you're born without there's nothing you can do there's nothing much you can do all right yeah but you find like even through as the man grows you know men as they're born there we all are fertile from birth yeah but you find like maybe the environmental factors can come in and maybe now they can push you to towards maybe now the situation of being infertile say for example if you're growing up and maybe for men maybe you you've ever heard of something called mumps yeah if men have mumps especially during their puberty stage explain what's mom's is for those that don't know okay mumps mostly is a childhood infection it's mostly a childhood infection and it's a viral infection and once it get to your bodies there's some changes it can occur okay so mostly especially when you're a child it doesn't really have that much of an impact than when you're an adult so you find when you have this this viral infection it can cause also an infection in the body like towards the reproductive place so once it causes an infection it can maybe cause maybe some blockages or something so you see if it causes blockages in a man like maybe let's say from the where the spams are supposed to travel all through you see now the spams are not able to travel from the test is towards out when the man ejaculates so you find like that can cause a problem that's what you say maybe infections even sexually transmitted infections can also cause problems in men also you find in males we normally tell them to have nice comfortable briefs you see like when when when they put on like tight underwear it can cause like you know some heat you know they need a lot of air aeration that's why we recommend like for them to have boxes things like that and also lifestyle you know you find like in our generation right now we have so many men who are indulging in maybe alcoholism we have like maybe the chewing of mirror the cut and you see these things in the long run they normally come back and affect the system so you find for men we normally tell them like sometimes it's a lifestyle thing sometimes it may be also exposure to radiation things like that that's why it's not recommended for either female in male to expose themselves maybe to x-rays to to go maybe you see in factories maybe where there's a lot of radiation we always tell you to always protect themselves yeah so now and is age a factor in men you know as Ali said for women you get to a certain age around that 540 especially it becomes a challenge but for men is it a factor because you know we have seen men 80 yeah giving back for men age is doesn't really affect that much that's why you may find even a 60-year-old man impregnating a young girl yeah yeah but what mostly affects men would be their lifestyle or maybe a chronic disease or yeah maybe the life yeah things like that so for men age is really not a factor but still we normally encourage like if you can be able to to reproduce at an early age it will give you a more comfortable space to take care of your child by the time you also get to that to that stage all right Alice back to you so now you've mentioned you know mostly age as a factor for women the different levels at which one should give birth and when one should see a guy now or in fact infertility expert so now what are some of the causes of infertility in women apart from age okay apart from age we can talk about there's some women who have tubal blockage you know fertilization normally happen on the tubes when your tube is blocked there's no way the egg can reach the sperm or the sperm can reach the egg just that's one cause another one is hormonal imbalance hormonal imbalance when your hormones are not balanced because home hormones are the one that passes message to the our system in there in the body so like when one hormone is not active there's no way it can pass the message to the hormone maybe in the ovary to produce an egg so that's another cause and just to hold on to that a bit so hormonal imbalance I think many people experience this even at an early age is it something that one can treat and then it gets back to track actually the good thing about infertility we have modern medicine everything is treatable right now and hormonal imbalance is just one of the mere mere mere causes that you can treat through medication and you're good maybe for medication just for two months and you're good to go things like tubal blockage you can always go for a laparoscopy or you can use medication that can unblock your tubes another cause is when you have maybe ovarian cysts on your in your ovary that will prevent your eggs from maturing so that they can be fertilized so whatever so the cysts are preventing the ovaries from maturing yes for maturing so that they can be good quality eggs actually cysts reduce your quality so cysts and fibroids it's something you can also do surgery and do away with it so that you go back to your normal state of fertility okay just to you know dwell on cysts and fibroids because I've had so many cases of this so is it safe for one to go for surgery before before getting trying to conceive again or can one try to conceive before getting them them off actually yeah cysts and fibroids is definitely a risk factor because one it might prevent you from getting pregnant and maybe if you get pregnant something like fibroid can cause some miscarriage because now you know the fibroid and the baby they are fighting for space so whoever wins if the fibroids pushes the baby it will really it will come out and it will cause some miscarriage for cysts you might be feeling some pains during your ovulation and during your menstrual cycle so such discomforts can make you wonder what is going on in my system so you can go for an ultrasound when the doctor finds you have a cyst or he can give you medication to reduce it or if the cyst can is causing more problem he can decide to send you for surgery and when you're when it's removed you're good to go it will have solved two problems make the pains and also it will have increased your fertility chances okay talk about the fibroids because you've said they are competing and this unwanted weeds comparing them to plants you know and it's like unwanted weeds in the womb competing and how are they how are they like you know for someone who doesn't know about them okay a fibroid is an abnormal mass in the uterus it can go grow inside the uterus or outside the uterus but it's an abnormal and anointed mass in your reproductive system so normally it's a malignant normally they are always malignant because even in a farm if you don't remove the weed it will grow so in our in our edges you can just notice it maybe when you have heavy menstrual cycles that can indicate maybe you have a fibroid or you just feel some sort of pain during your menstrual cycle that can indicate you have a fibroid and also in the old age when maybe you feel your your body is a bit heavy your tummy is enlarging you might consider removing that fibroid even if you have already given birth in future actually fibroid normally don't cause you to be infertile but once they're there they can cause many problems to your yes miscarriage and also your system when you bleed too much your HB will go low and you might even become sick maybe anemia so fibroid is something that we should all consider checking our system if we have or if we are not or if we are trying to get a baby or if you're not trying to get a baby is something that should be removed once you detect it yeah so Mark to you a linear tell us about the checkups how you know how often should we go for the checkups and why are they necessary like she has said we should go to check if we have fibroid suspecting it and you know maybe not a time in a group but you don't understand a friendly food maybe it's a favorite there so what is the importance of going for the checkups first of all it is usually recommended at least every year you do a well woman check even for the males okay because in the life that we're living in we're experiencing a lot of changes maybe because of diet because you know we're having a lot of GMOs in our market and everything so it is recommended at least every year you can do a well woman check and also mostly especially like married couples and you've had like she's given us a timeline of some ages how yeah so if you're married and probably you've been trying for for getting pregnant for a while and nothing is forthcoming it is very important and advisable for you to to seek medical advice like you can go to your nearest maybe a Guiney who can do the recommended tests like to find out maybe what is the problem you as you've had we have hormonal some people have hormonal changes some have maybe infections some maybe it may be the tubal so you need to check the uterus we have some scans you need to do so best is if you've been married for a while and you're not nothing is forthcoming it's best for you to seek medical advice plus also if just you are not yet married and you'd like to just know how you're faring best is every year just do a medical checkup so now when you go for the checkup because I know of a story of someone close to me went for a checkup and was told you need to get pregnant this year so what are some you know some of the factors that would cause want to be told that and why is it necessary to follow that maybe because maybe what don't have anyone here but you just wanted to go and check I think a doctor would probably tell you that so that you can actually get in the mood to want to to to get pregnant because you know time is for us ladies time is a factor so the more you age the more everything will now start working against you so the earlier you start the better so recommended is whenever you you get into that space like yeah I've been told by the doctor I need to get pregnant right now you need to find out like why was this doctor referring me to do this right now is it because something bad will happen to my body is it my hormones will play against me things like that but normally doctors will not give you like a strict time like now now now because if it's now now now I mean you'd have already gotten pregnant yeah yeah so the thing is first of all you need to rule out worst what is actually causing you not to get pregnant at that time and what can actually be done like she said if it is hormonal we have medication to actually help us with that if it is fibroids you do away with that if it is assist you see now that one is removed and you will go back to a situation where you are able to get pregnant so basically it is just eliminating the cause of the infertility and then finding a solution like what would be the best treatment for me to help me get pregnant yeah so box you Alice we can share to ask some of the measures for people will struggling with infertility what are some of the options given to them because I know of I've forgotten the name really but somehow you you you store your you can store your eggs or your spams something like that so tell us some of the options yeah actually we can start with the one you've mentioned it's a modern technique where you're able to freeze your eggs maybe right now if you're 30 and you're not ready to get pregnant you can go to a specialist they take out your eggs they freeze them because as we have said in this topic age and infertility as you grow older your infertility goes down a bit so as well you're still young you can be able to remove these eggs and freeze them and it will the eggs will help you even when you're at 40 and you try to get pregnant then you're not able to get pregnant we can do a procedure called IVF and implant the eggs you had freeze into your uterus and successfully you become pregnant just just one of the methods you can use another method you can use you can always boost your system by using supplements as a woman we all need to be on supplements well women supplements supplements such as folic acid vitamin C which is an anti-detoxant there's also omega omega will give your eggs strength even when you're 38 or 39 and you want to get pregnant you will get pregnant we also have an hormonal imbalance drug called DHA it will maintain your hormones and also another drug called CQ10 it will also engage your chromosomes in your eggs so that they become active even at the age of 40 you're able to conceive with your normal eggs we should also look at their lifestyle we should take healthy foods such as vegetables healthy fats such as avocado we avoid processed foods meat products because meat meat will just make you be obese because here we're also looking at your BMI once your eggs are too fatty definitely when you're too fat your eggs are a bit slow even if in your normal malformation if you're a bit fat or obese you can be a bit slower on things so that's why that's how our our also our bodies work so if you want to maintain a if you can maintain a good BMI you can be active you can release some stress through yoga acupuncture you'll be able to maintain your fertility through these years okay so we've talked about medication preservation and lifestyle change you should also avoid alcohol smoking and drugs those are things that will have will affect your fertility also a woman and also a man so maybe you can take us through you know you've mentioned the processes but someone maybe one jico you know common money she might not be able to afford IVF because I know it's a very expensive process so are there other options for for people like this that they can afford because they want to get a baby but they're having difficulties yeah yeah if you if you are if you are you on the timeline that I've said and you're seeing you're not getting a baby what you should consider is just the baseline checks that I've said healthy eating lifestyle change elimination of drugs and also using supplements eventually with time you'll get pregnant that's why we are seeing a lot of women getting pregnant it's just adapting to a normal life life change you avoid the things that can make you become infertile such as drugs things things like those so what I'm saying those are that's one of the cheapest way just avoid things that can get you infertile but when we go when you go to a gyna you can consider doing a surgery if your tubes are blocked or if you have cyst or fibres you can consider doing a surgery then you go back to your marriage you will get pregnant and if it doesn't happen after trying the lifestyle change the medication or maybe surgeries where it's applicable you can always visit a fertility specialist fertility specialists are all over Nairobi right now we we are blessed to have a lot of fertility clinics in Nairobi you can walk in there and you can you can consult with a doctor and he can he can he can bring an intervention before we go to IVF which is a bit expensive you can be an intervention such as monitoring maybe can give you injection then it tell you on a certain day make sure you will be ovulating do an ovulation test then go and be active and be and be sexually active with your husband on maybe maybe from day 10 to day 14 you can get pregnant also on maybe day 10 to 14 he can he can do an I you are I you are it means inserting spams directly to the uterus that is affordable around 30 to 40 thousand so he can tell you on a certain date you'll be ovulating I've done test then come to the clinic I'll insert spams into uterus and we'll be able to track the egg that will be ovulating at that time you can also get pregnant through that and if the other options are not working it is when your doctor will tell you maybe we need to do an IVF because as we are trying all this time is also moving maybe you started trying when you are 33 and now when the doctor is telling you know we need to do an IVF it's maybe when you're 37 and he's seeing you're going to read the mark of 40 and at 40 maybe he might not behave be able to help you effectively so the doctor might want to introduce IVF to you IVF is in vitro fertilization is a procedure now and we'll do everything in the lab you've had people say test your babies but it's not normally test your babies explain that because it's being misunderstood it's being misunderstood because when they think the baby is developing in us in attested but this this embryo is only out of your body for maximum of five days so the doctor will remove the egg from your ovary and he will request your husband to give out a semen sample then he will fertilize the egg and the sperm in a laboratory and watch over it as it matures the same way that this this this egg and sperm will fertilize in your body and mature and attach to the uterus so the doctor will watch it for maybe one day today day three normally they do transfers on day three when the embryo is on the third day but if he might want to continue watching it I've told you can only watch it for a maximum of five days so you can ever either be done transfer on either day three or day five so on day five the eggs that you had removed and the sample that your husband had given the sperm they are joined together they become an embryo on day five they become blastocyst we return the babies back to a uterus and the babies are normal the babies are normal because when we say watching them the doctor is watching them through a microscope and embryologists does this work very well so he will be able to tell you this one is growing this one is not growing this one might come out twins this one is strong this is grade one grade two because definitely when he removes it he doesn't remove one egg we remove like 10 10 to 15 eggs so he will take the best and implant in your uterus once he implants in your uterus if the procedure is successful after two weeks you'll test for a pregnancy test and you'll turn out to be pregnant it's very effective it's the most effective method yes it's the last option and the most effective one to treat infertility okay leave them back to you so how do you solve the problem of men with low sperm count because this is also common for low sperm counting men first we need to find out what is causing this low sperm counting men because if it is environmental that is lifestyle you know you need to eliminate if it's taking alcohol then you need to actually stop if it's drugs you actually need to stop because you see if that if that is what now is affecting and you really want to try out then you eliminate that another thing would be if if the low sperm count is being caused maybe by a tumor or blockage remember the prostate gland is the most important gland in men so if there's a problem with that also we need to to to find out if it's a tumor then it needs to be eradicated removed you know to so that this man can go back to optimal sperm production if if it's genetic then you need to know like something genetic really we do not have like a solution at the moment you know the good thing with medicine it's ever-changing every day so someone someone even me we can start maybe researching on that yeah so that we can see what would actually be the effective method to actually help if it's genetic but yeah basically it would be so for now if a man maybe has you know low sperm count as a genetic problem that can't really be solved for genetic really that can be solved but if maybe it's environmental factors and everything you eliminate that then remember we also have medication to help boost this so if if if that you've seen the doctor the doctor has done something called a semen analysis because you see for a sperm we look at three factors we look at the count then we look at the morphology which is the structure of the sperm you know the sperm needs to have a nice oval head and a tail and also we look at motility the tail now is now what actually propels the the sperm towards the egg to fertilize okay so when you consider all these factors even when the doctor wants to to to give you maybe an advice we look at he'll consider the the semen analysis then recommend maybe a drug that would actually help that so men should not beat themselves up in the sense of like oh I have slow sperm count let's find out what is the cause of the low sperm count and as much as the count is low remember if you want to try out naturally then you probably need to boost with diet exercise if you're obese you need to lose weight if it's alcohol you need to do away with that smoking you know as much as it is hard but if you really want children there are some things you can actually sacrifice for yeah okay still on matters men I know there's a lot of you know guys saying you I want to be a sperm donor so is it a thing that it's going on that I can go and do needs my sperm and I'm given a certain amount and then I sign something that I will be incognito for life you know is it a thing yeah right now it is a thing because let's say I am married and my husband is the one who maybe genetically does not have any sperm in the semen remember semen is just a fluid to help carry the sperm from the test is to out okay so you might find you might have semen but there's nothing in it so without spam there's nothing you can do about that so you find we really want to have this baby but my husband is not able to so you can get a sperm donor whether known known meaning let's say a friend a brother decides to donate so you see that is an agreement between us but now if now we've gone you see now for a case like that definitely you need to do IVF because I cannot go maybe I'm okay and my husband is not okay I cannot go to to sleep with someone else so that I get pregnant so I would get someone maybe in anonymous from the fertility clinic so with the fertility clinic they will tell me like maybe we have different sperm donors we have this I can say I can describe the characteristics that I want oh yeah so you can you can get like a tall duck and handsome because we have people who actually donate and yes the hospital would actually give them something for for that but to me I would not know who the sperm donor because I wanted to remain anonymous for the sake of my peace you know I've gone to seek help but now I wanted to remain anonymous this is someone who's just helped me so with that definitely this man needs to give a consent in the hospital of the fertility clinic needs to write down a consent to release any parental rights because that is very important so that this person even if we meet in the streets and they like this baby looks like me does not have a right over my child because their donor signed a consent to remain anonymous and just giving the sample there and the hospital is the one maybe to to to agree with maybe to get something or not okay yeah Alice is this the same with women can women donate eggs yeah actually women can donate eggs very well because we have these girls between 25 to 30 they have good quality of eggs and we have a woman from 45 is unable to get pregnant because the quality of egg is low so we we are really creating awareness there's a way we can help this other woman that's really that really wants a baby but she can't get a baby because of her age or maybe she did surgery and the ovaries were removed you know that's not her fault yeah so we have these young girls who are willing to donate their eggs so that they can help someone else become a mother so that's that's when you go to a fertility clinic if the fertility specialist tells you your ovarian reservice law we might not be able to get good quality eggs for you he might recommend a donor so when we choose a donor we choose a young donor so that it can increase also your chances so you can say maybe maybe i'm low i can say i want a lower girl i will definitely get a lower girl because it's all about passion this girl is helping someone who cannot get pregnant because this young girl you are 25 you're born with a lot of eggs millions and hundreds of thousands of eggs you can help someone get be a parent because that's the end goal we all all we all as women we want to be parents so once you carry the baby and the sperm is from your husband so the child is still yours it's from your family this your husband's child is the child is also yours because and you carry this child you carry this child the blood flow is from you the care the feelings the emotions this baby turns out to be yours and nobody can really know that you use a donor egg actually whatever you signed in the hospital it's confidential it's anonymous and you go on with your life and lastly maybe you can mention briefly about surrogacy you know this is also another option do we do it in Kenya okay surrogacy surrogacy the laws are not passed in Kenya but we do it through a method called adoption so you can have someone carry carry the pregnancy for you and once it's delivered once the baby is delivered through the adoption laws you can be able to have this child as your and the moment one can can decide to opt for for a surrogacy maybe you had surgery and your uterus was removed or maybe from your childhood you've never had a uterus there people were born without a uterus and maybe when you see things like fibroids when fibroids are too much in your uterus your doctor might decide just to do away with the uterus because removing the fibroids might cost more harm to your uterus and we also have diseases like tuberculosis of the uterus when you have that you might also be not be able to carry your own child so that's when you you get into an agreement with another person to carry the pregnancy for you up to term now these people are lending their uterus and definitely a surrogate is compensated after that but after delivery now through the laws in Kenya you can be able to have your child through the process of adoption yeah okay so thank you very much ladies for sharing you know such amazing insights on fertility and reproductive health so tell us how someone can reach you in case they want some consultation or anything and remind them and remind them what you do okay like I began telling you my name is Lilian and I'm a fertility health care expert so don't be shy don't beat yourself up and also reduce stigmatization because as we've seen as much as you have a problem there is a solution and it all starts by you going for a consultation and get an advice from a health care expert on how well you can actually go about the problem so you can reach us out on um we have a facebook page lotters fertility agencies we can also reach us on a number 0 7 9 1 8 2 6 8 8 6 5 yeah and also we have an instagram page lotters fertility get to us reach us out let us help you and let us reduce this stigma because as we've seen we can create smiles to different homes different families and yes we can do this together I cannot do it and do this together okay tell us Alice what is your final word tell us where we can get you okay we are actually creating awareness don't sit at home if you want to be a child come out reach out to us we'll be able to take you to various specialists in Nairobi we have fertility point we have MediHill we have Dr Sarita they're all fertility specialists and if you want to reach us you can reach us through 0 7 9 1 8 2 6 8 6 5 or you can go to our facebook page lotters fertility agency you can get our contact there we can chat through whatsapp and be sure you will bear a child because our slogan is from life to life from life to life from life to life wonderful wonderful thank you ladies again for coming on board we'd love to have you again and again okay thank you so much thank you that has been Lillian and Alice from again lotters fertility agency from lotters fertility agency talking to us about reproductive health specifically matter fertility they say from life to life I hope you've enjoyed today's show thank you for staying with us all the way till 10 a.m join us again tomorrow same time 7 a.m to 10 a.m from the team we thank you so much and we wish you a great day ahead my name is Stephanie Ayata the hashtag is why in the morning at y254