Welcome to Sister Power. I'm Sharon Thomas-Yarbrough. Today Sister Power is excited about having a conversation with Stogie Kenyatta. The world is my home, the life of Paul Robison. Having performed two sold-out audiences on stages in theaters and U.S. embassies in 16 countries around the world, writer, actor, comedian Stogie Kenyatta's acclaimed one-man Broadway style show will premiere in Honolulu for one weekend only, February the 1st and February the 2nd at the Doors Duke Theater, Honolulu Museum of Art kicking off Black History Month. The world is my home, the life of Paul Robison is presented by Sisters Empowering Hawaii, Hawaii's foremost women's empowerment organization. Stogie and Alan Bryson, welcome to Sister Power. I'm fine thank you. I'm joining you from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Fort Lauderdale, you were in Barbados recently, right? Yes, absolutely. I performed in Barbados. It's opening of my film, Joseph, that I did in Ghana and Jamaica last summer and the world premiered was in Barbados and on the 24th, which I believe is tomorrow, it opens in Ghana, Nigeria and Northwest Africa. That's fabulous and I want our viewers, our new viewers, to meet a new member to Sisters Empowering Hawaii and Alan Bryson is our marketing director. Welcome Alan. Oh, thanks for having me. All this well. All this well. All the new. Good, good. Thank you. We're so excited, Stogie, about the one man show that would be premiering here at Hawaii, February the 1st and February the 2nd. And, you know, let's just chat a bit about who is Paul Robison. Tell us about this superstar. Well, Paul Robison is America's first Renaissance man. He's the son of a slave born 1898. And was the third African American to get an academic scholarship to Rutgers University. He graduated 1919 Magna Cum Laude and valedictorian. And then went on to Columbia University Law School and passed the New York State Bar in 1922 and became the very first Negro attorney hired by Manhattan Law Firm. He spoke 15 languages. He performed globally. He was an actor as well. He was an all American football player, played football and basketball. And he was the ultimate Renaissance man because he was both left brain and right brain. And he was the paradigm for African American success, succeeding in all the areas in which made African Americans wealthy and famous, which was athletics, entertainment, law and social justice. He's amazing individual and way ahead of the sun. Wow, that's amazing. Alan, what questions do you have for Mr. Kenyatta? Well, the first question I want to ask is what led to this this play will lead to you becoming part of us and on stage? Well, the very first time I did it in the late 90s, it was on Broadway with James Earl Jones in the 70s. And I had a successful Broadway run there with James Earl Jones and Lloyd Richards directing it. And later on, the gentleman who played a man called Hawk, Avery Brooks, he did it as well on Broadway and Danny Glebrook. And they did a Broadway version of the show. When I was offered to do the show, it was because Robert Guillaume, who was supposed to do it at a university, he got Phantom of Diopera. He was on the study and they brought him in to take over the lead in Phantom of Diopera. So the job fell to me. I rewrote this play because it had 16 songs in it and is focused more on the politics of the time.  So I tell it chronologically.  What's unique and what led me to it is that he's the most unique of all of our African American heroes. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, the boys, they all made huge contributions, but they had lies that I would not want. It was too much work. It was too much sadness and too much suffering. Robeson played sports. He sang, he acted, and he did all of those things and he was just a combination. It was if Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali went to law school, became a lawyer and then started a Broadway play and became a great singer as well. That was what Robeson was. He was Joe Lewis, Nat King Cole, Martin Luther King, Jack Johnson, all rolled into one and Burger Marshall. And so he was, like I said, the paradigm for African American success. Yes. Well, you know, we're having it, your one man show at the Doors Duke Theater. Why does using theater as a vehicle for social change mean and why is that important to you? The question was why, why is it why does you why you why does using theater as a vehicle for social change? Oh, that using theater as a vehicle for social change is vitally important because education is changed. And right now, Robeson is not known to a lot of people. And the thing is the greatest influence on young people today has been the arts and culture and music. And so you learn more through that. And so introducing him this way and using we society is made easier to kill. You can learn how to blow up a bomb online, how to build a bomb. You have anthrax, which you can't smell or taste, but in 12 seconds after touching your skin, it'll kill you. You have poisonous gases. And so technology has made it easier to take human life. And so what happens is that we need to develop a new generation that instant in intrinsically understands that just because technology says you can doesn't mean you should. And to do that, you have to develop more than reading, writing and you have to develop soul.  That's one we were just looking at some of your performances. You're looking at your pictures. And I know this isn't as a laugh out loud funny as it is educational. This romanticized love story with a toe tapping jazz and bebop soundtrack features music from the Harlem Renaissance. This is exciting for Honolulu and the Harlem Renaissance. Tell us more about the 12 characters that you would be playing with colorful props and wardrobe changes. Well, I play 12 characters because throughout the piece, even though it's about ropes in the people like Cat Calloway, Fats Waller, Jack Johnson and people that all share in it because they were part of his life and they're part of the soundtrack of his life. And so no one lives in a vacuum. And since Jim Crow and segregation forced black people only buy from and sell to each other and play and party in a segregated society, we were into mixing. And so the talent became really concentrated. And so they were all influenced by each other. And so it becomes vitally important because without the Harlem Renaissance, you learn through the Harlem Renaissance that indigenous Africans and descendants of enslaved Africans invented and created every single form of music on the planet Earth except opera and classical. That's a tremendous statement for one ethnic group, a minority equity group to lay that cultural claim on not just America, but the globe. So whether it's jazz, which is the father of blues and soul and fusion and rock and roll and R&B and soul and gospel and country and reggae and soka and Calypso, all of those have their origin. The exception of opera and classical. Everything ever created that you ever sing is created by the genius and the creativity of the African in America and around the world. That's just moment. This is just absolutely wonderful. This gives me all kind of chills and I'm so excited for this one man show. And I want to immediately think some of our sponsors for the one man show. I would like to think Evolve Theater, the Doris Duke Theater, of course, Jim of events, Dr. James McCoy and Dr. Joanne Williams, LaZoya and Aqua Aston Hospitality. And we had a Lulu is excited about this one man show that will be happening. Tell us the dates of the event, Alan. Mm hmm. The events going to be February 1 and second at the Doris Duke Theater Honolulu Museum of Art, located at 900 South, Barentania Street, very close to the Bladestell. If you ever been able to see Janet Jackson or any of the greats perform at the Bladestell, it's it's a few minutes walk. Absolutely. And so we are there and the tickets are $35. And what I like about this Stoge, this event is suitable for our ages. So talk about talk to the parents to bring their children and aunts and grandparents. Yes, absolutely. From ages 14 and up, it's suitable for all ages. There's no profanity in Israel. It's a PG cut. Now, some people have said, will the content be too extreme for young people? And I point out to them that that's a luxury that no one has. Whether 9 11, which is one of the most traumatic things for the generation where over 3000 Americans died in 9 11 when the towers came down. And the violence, school shootings, all of these things are way more injurious to young people than anything that will happen on stage. What what bringing young people do is they will get to see Paul Wilson at five years old. I play him as a young boy. He deals with some of the young people, the things that they deal with right now. And tragedy Greek suffering loss of a parent loss of a loved one to war or police shooting or anything that is a part of this milieu called life. It's a price we pay to be here that we're going to feel. And it gives you a chance to learn how to deal with it. You can't dress for her strategy, but you can, to some degree, prepare for a compassionate response to tragedy because that's what it is. And there's an old Shakespearean quote that says, it's only when nature touches the face of mankind that we all become kids. Anytime there's a hurricane, a tornado, a huge fire of volcanic eruption or something, which does not discriminate. It takes a rich and a poor, the young and the old, the good and the bad. It doesn't matter. It takes humanity as it is. And only then do we realize how fully connected we are that we are one people. One of the themes of the show is if we accept the fatherhood of God, then we must accept the brotherhood of man. It's a simplified version of saying if he feeds your father's son, and she's your father, he's your father's daughter, then she immediately becomes your sister. And we say that if we all call God, the father, then all of his children are brothers. And that is the thing that, you know, that to try to get men to live with brothers. And so that's the universal message for Brogson. And it is clearly and still our only hope for humanity. Well, that's wonderful. We're about to take a quick break. But we're talking about the young people coming in and Paul Robeson spoke out against racism and became a world activist. And he was a star athlete and academic and third African American to attend Rutgers University. So when we come back, we're going to talk about him being an athlete and you being an actor and comedian and writer. And I this is the place February the first and February the second that anyone who has a passion for acting has a passion for comedy. This is a place to be at the Doris Duke Theater on February the first and February the second. And we'll be right back. Stay tuned. Hey, hello, everyone. And welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii studio. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Pretty Matters Hawaii. We air here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time, trying to bring you issues about security that you may not know issues that can protect your family, take yourself, take our community, protect our companies, the folks we work with. Please join us and hope you can maybe get a little different perspective on how to live a little safer. Aloha. Aloha, my name is duration. You are watching Think Tech Hawaii. I will be hosting a show here every other Wednesday at one p.m. And we will be talking to a lot of experts and guests around sustainability, social justice, the future here in Hawaii, progressive politics and a whole lot more. So please tune in and thank you for watching Think Tech Hawaii. Welcome back to Sister Power. I'm your host Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. And we are so excited about the one man show. And we have Stogie Kenyatta joining us here from Fort Lauderdale. But he lives in Los Angeles.  The world is my home, the life of Paul Robeson. And also we have joining us.  We also have Alan Bryson, sisters in part in Hawaii's marketing director. Welcome, welcome gentlemen. Before we went to break, we were talking about the famous Paul Robeson and and Alan just, you know, you are just only 28 years old. And you've learned so much about Paul Robeson. Tell us about tell us about your takeaway. I'm just, I mean, when I hear the story of Paul Robeson, what I've done my personal research on and her Stogie say I'm just sometimes I get baffled that one person can do so much in one life. Like, I mean, he was, of course, he was married for 44 years to Eslanda.  And if my research is correct, they said on the weekends while he was in law school at Columbia U, he played professional football and taught Latin. So I'm like, I'm just trying to wrap my head around just, just how can one person, you know, do so many things. And he speaks 12 languages. That's a rabbit hole there. Like, how can you speak over 12 languages? And who are you talking to? And what are you talking about? So it's just like, it's just like Stogie Kenyatta said about the left brain and the right brain. He was definitely an intellect. He was a thinker. He was a deep thinking he was he was a deep person, but he was also a very colorful, artistic person. So I mean, for those who are fortunate after me, Paul Robeson, I think he was he has something for everybody. He could talk to everybody because he could, you know, I'm pretty sure he knew something about computers. And he knew probably just as much about sports. It is cool was just was Stogie taken away because you are playing this fantastic human being. Yeah, you see, that is magnificent about it. And a lot of people ask me, they say, Well, when we do Q&As, when they ask about how is he able to have done so much and achieved so much is so he lived two lifetimes. And the thing is, is that without the distraction of TV and, you know, video games and all the things that consumers today, you have to because you do know that you're representing an entire generation. And life was short then because during Paul Robeson's lifetime, you had World War One and you had World War Two. Between those two wars, World Global Wars, we had 97 million dead of the 97 million dead people. 70 million of those were civilians that were not involved with the war. So what you knew growing up with then was that life was short and life was cheap. And I mean that globally and not just across the world here in America. It was March, on or about March 23rd, somewhere in the New Mexico desert, the United States for the very first time tested the atom bomb. Within 12 days later, by April 6th, I mean, August 6th, they dropped it on Hiroshima, killing almost 400,000 people in 12 minutes. Two days later, they dropped another stocky. And of course that ended the war because if they can get the phone, they was like, Listen, whatever you do whatever, we're done, we're not fighting anymore. And I say that to say that it was as though you got a brand new toy or hat and you couldn't wait to wear it. Human life was cheap. The thing that you think that if you, when can you get the entire globe to get together and say, let's choose slides and don't kill our brothers. They did that not once, but twice. Global World Wars. So that being said, young people and people living under that social criteria knew that tomorrow is a promise, you have to do everything today. And Robeson approached life that way because as a descendant of the slaves and knowing that he was three fifths of a man and it was not against the law to kill him, he approached life with that zest. And once he got to Europe, and he saw that the French and the Swiss Swedes in different countries did not live and have the same ideology as me. He said, I wanted to learn to talk to those people. So while he was in London, he went to the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies and he studied language and he learned about all these different languages and he studied them. And that's how you know he was a genius because he learned so many languages after the age of 20. And he became good friends with Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, and Nnamdi, and Nnamdi became the president of Nigeria. Jomo Kenyatta became the president of Kenya and Kwame Nkrumah became the president of Ghana. And the three of them along with W.E.B.B. Boys formed the O.A.U., the Organization of African Unity, because he had a vision for a unified African. They're phenomenal men that did so much in a short lifetime. It shows how, you know, and the only parallel to Robeson that I thought did so much in a short lifetime would have to have been Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, because both of them died before their 39th birthday. And when you think that in 39 years Martin Luther King not only went to college and got a degree and got a doctorate, he married what had to be the most beautiful woman in the 60s, or the 50s, Florida Scott King. And he had five babies with her. So he had an active home life, and he had a beautiful wife, and he did all of that. And still, at 26 years old, brought down the Alabama racist segregated bus system. So it's a phenomenal achievement by phenomenal men. And it's one of the reasons why we are who we are in such amazing ways with people.  You're such a great storyteller, Stokey. What is the connection to Robeson, the Obamas, and the state of Hawaii? Oh, that's a wonderful question, because I often say when people ask me how is this show so important to me, I said, because Paul Robeson has proved that one person can make a tremendous difference, even if that one person is not around to see the difference that they make. And I say it right after that, without Paul Robeson, we would have never had Barack Obama as president. Now, a lot of people think, well, that's a bit of a stretch, because they never met. But then I explain to them that Robeson was the most influential artist of his time. And as so, he mentored some younger artists. Among them is number one mentee was a great Jamaican, Harry Belafonte, and his best friend, Sidney Portier. When him and both Bojangles Robinson tried to get a black player in the National Major League Baseball, the best black player in the Negro League was Jackie Robinson. He lived in Pasadena, California. He was a son of a Texas Louisiana slave, Grand Center for the Texas Louisiana Slaves. They came here. So the three of them became his primary mentees, Sidney Portier, Belafonte, and Jackie Robeson. Robeson taught his mentees several things, among them three things in particular. Number one, he taught him education was the number one way to advance in society. He said educated people do less harm to their fellow fellow citizens. The second thing he taught him was that the continents of African and the African in America were one people. And the third thing he said that was successful African Americans have a moral and cultural obligation to try to get a quality education for qualified African students. So in 1959, Belafonte, Sidney Portier, and Jackie Robeson started a foundation to pay for college for qualified African students, but they first had to find a university that would do so. All of the local in the lower 48 said no thank you, we don't want Africans coming here no matter who's paying for. So, but our newest state was Hawaii. And Hawaii said well, we haven't been part of America long enough to learn how to hate anybody, and we're kind of brown ourselves. So if you if you want you can bring them here and the more you bring the bigger the discount. So Belafonte, Portier, and Jackie Robeson went off to Africa, started West Africa, went to Central Africa, all the way to East Africa. The requirements were you must be a high school graduate, speak fluent English, and pass a college entrance examination test. They brought 72 students from 18 African nations, and they flew them all to the University of Hawaii to study. Among them was none other than a brilliant boy from the mountain sides of Kenya, and his name was none other than Barack Obama. And that was how, and while he was there, he met Anne, they, and when she was, they dated, they fell in love, she got pregnant, when she was three months pregnant, they got married, and Barack Obama, the global economic students from the mountain sides of Kenya, named his firstborn son on Hawaiian soil in America, Barack Hussein Obama. Oh, there you people, viewers, there you have it. Who would not want to come out Saturday, February the 1st at 7 p.m. and we have a matinee Sunday, February the 2nd at 4 p.m. at the Doris Duke Theater. It's only $35 per person, and I want the lovers out there to know this is a way to jumpstart Valentine's Day by bringing the family, grab your best friend, grab your wife, grab your husband, and come out and contact Sisters in Park Hawaii at gmail.com, or please call us at<PHONE_NUMBER>. And in 30 seconds or left, Stokey, leave us a tip why everyone in Hawaii needs to come to this show. Well, there'll also be a meet and greet. After the show, I come off the stage in full costume, and I'll take pictures with the audience and in different and signed programs and answer questions, and there's a full meet and greet afterwards. But it's a one to the... I've been to 16 countries in the world and I've never performed in Honolulu. So you're integral part of the story because you gave us our very first African-American president, and he did so with such class and grace, and there's nature and disnurture, and it was Hawaii that nurtured President Obama. And you nurtured him with the gentleness, the grace, the style, and the humanity that's so amazing. And we see how rare it is now with whom we have an impeached bigot in the White House. And so the very fact that the state, that by the time they count Hawaii's votes, the president has been decided. Not once in American history have we waited to see how Hawaii voted before we knew who our president was, and yet still you gave us our first African-American president. It's a wonderful thing that shows the testament that it's not where you are, it's who you are, and that quality and character does count. And so it's an honor, and I'm looking forward to it, and there are more Obamas out there, and there are young people there that are looking for this, and I often tell people, when I speak at universities and do master classes, I say you can't start a fire without a spark. This show will be the spark that will ignite the wisdom, the compassion, and the intellect of many, many young people there, and it will be a satisfied thing for those in comforting to know that those that have been living right all along. So it's an amazing opportunity to use theaters, vehicles, social change, and we're the number one nation in the world, the United States, not because of bombs and bullets, but because of arts and culture, and that is what system power in Hawaii is doing. I'm honored that you guys have chosen to bring me out, and I'm still looking forward to opening Black History Month in this new decade, 2020, here on the home of our 50th state, Hawaii. Thank you very much, Stokey. We're so excited for your one-man show. The world is my home, the life of Paul Robeson. Get your tickets, go to the Honolulu Museum of Art, aloha, and I just want to thank Heritage Painting and Waterproofing and some of our sponsors, Evolve Theater, and Dr. James McCoy, aloha.


Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome. My name is Nanna Afaji, West Africa Civil Society Institute, and I'm joining from Accra, Ghana. Waxi supports non-profit organizations in 17 countries throughout West Africa, and Waxi's mission is to have a strong, resilient, influential, effective, efficient, and sustainable civil society in West Africa and the African continent. And without technology today, that is absolutely unattainable. So you then understand why Waxi has been a Texas Global Network Partner since 2017 and absolutely cherishes being part of this family that prioritizes civil society resilience and strength in spite of our diversity using technology. We have been looking forward to this summit. It's a great chance to share about the communities and mission-based organizations that serve them in West Africa and to learn about ways to improve our work, supporting them. Engaged community creates resilience. That is at the heart of our work here at the Texas Global Network. And that resonates with how civil society rallied in solidarity in spite of their diversity during the raging period of the pandemic in Ghana, other parts of West Africa, to provide support to vulnerable and marginalized groups, dipping into their personal and even drying organizational coffers to support people who needed it most. We needed each other then and even more so now. This Edinburgh symbol of the Akhan people of Ghana represents unity in diversity. It's an image of crocodiles who are naturally independent animals, but they are connected at the stomach, Siamese crocodiles. And so they depend on one another to survive in spite of their individuality. That is what we are here at the Texas Global Network. We may be diverse, we may have our uniqueness and idiosyncrasies, but we are connected. And the more we recognize that and engage, the more resilient we become. After this challenging year, I can certainly say that I needed to connect with this community. This is the eighth summit since the network started with five partners 15 years ago. Today, you are joined by more than 60 tech sup global network partners from around the world who reach 236 countries to exchange technology, knowledge and connections that help community-based civil society organizations maximize their social impact. And our collaborators are here as well. They are here with us, firms, foundations, investors and allies. Thank you so much for joining. In normal times, we would gather every two years in San Francisco and that has been more like a reunion than a conference. This, of course, is our first virtual summit. We would have loved to be together and will be in the future. The summit is designed to allow you to engage as much as possible from wherever you are. Your voice matters and it does make the network stronger. So if you are new today, whether your mission is feeding the hungry or housing the homeless or protecting the oppressed, whatever matters most to you and your community, we need you, we need your ideas and you are in the right place. So some of the sessions are available around the world, global ones like this one. Some are regional, some are across two regions and all of them will invite you to engage for portions of the session. One more thing, we are learning as we go. So please expect some delays due to platform or bandwidth or human error. Let's embrace the challenge, invite in the awkward pause and video conversations so that we can get beyond that to the heart of the conversations that we need to have. And later today, we will have the chance to meet up with old friends and make some new connections. I would love to talk to you both, learn about you and your work and I'll be at table 12. So please come and find me. Now, like any good reunion, we have some home movies. So let's check out this one that talks about the last time we gathered starting from there. Take you back first to 2019. I know it seems like a lifetime ago. The better days. The good old 2019, yes. It does feel like you're looking backwards through a tunnel that you're still inside of. How are we after this incredible, in all senses of the word, year? I have a lot of good memories from the summit. The thing I remember most about the summit was being able to spend a week on the campus of that Arna Institute. We were in an amazing setting. We were at a beautiful location in San Francisco. All of our partners together in one place. Just so inspiring to be able to sit down at a table and have lunch with our partner from Chile and Taiwan and South Africa. I often describe this event as more of a reunion than a conference. You have voices from civil society around the world. I really enjoyed the opening session where everybody said hello from their country and their enthusiasm and recognition and sort of applause for each other and the way that it really brought everybody into the room. I thought that was pretty terrific. There was just the opportunity to feel a buzz and energy but yet have many separate conversations. Just seeing people that care about so much that we've been working with for many years and others who are new and having the first time to make those connections. This is our first time being part of the TechSoup network. It's both overwhelming and very, very exciting. It was a great introduction to all the work that you do, all the work that you do supporting nonprofits small on large. It is a special group. People who work for the same vision, like making a better civil society with the help of technology. Being in the same place together for several days makes us really feel so much more concretely how global the work is that we're doing. So when we come together, we're able to deliberate issues that one single organization could do on its own. And we are all aligned around the kind of work we're trying to do. That exchange of best practices and collective learning has enhanced our programs and projects and allowed us to generate more impact. It's a pleasure being part of this conversation. TechSoup is the beginning of everything. Very forward thinking and practical. People and organizations represented that that try to move the needle just a bit further in terms of creating a better ecosystem of support. I think that the most amazing thing we saw is the power of the network and how influential it could be to really address the social problems in the world. So we are proud to share our knowledge and our interest with so many countries and organizations in the civil society There were over 400 people registered for the event. At least 50 countries, 39 languages are probably represented in this room. Seeing people build their plans around that kind of community and that sense of being together was really a wonderful experience. You see the scale.  Definitely in a non-profit space, we're learning from so many other people, organizations that have been in the space for so much longer. I particularly felt very connected with the teams in Italy and in Germany. And this is something that had never happened before. We all have a different perspective because of the languages that we're in, the way the problems surface in our individual countries. But at the summit, you get to hear more of the stories behind it, what they're thinking about happening next and what they're worried about.  So it makes it easier to have the follow-up conversations after the summit, whatever they're about. The relationships that we built at that summit is what carries us on over the last couple of years because we can go back to those shared experiences and build upon the relationships that we form there. I want to say that we're in this together. Together we can make a difference. So bias coming together to connect some of the ideas that we are sort of facing in a very pragmatic way. The shrinking space in civil society globally, the lack of access to resources. The end goal of all these things that we are doing, especially in this summit, is to come up with solutions to social issues through technology. We also heard from an Asia Pacific partner who is building technology to help the aging population in Hong Kong. It's a great moment to share all of our work, our new ideas. Our knowledge, experience, programs, and that's huge. And most importantly, promoting education, promoting education for the young people, promoting science, promoting the arts. That's the purpose of what we do. And people want applications to help them do that and do that better for more people. Every organization is becoming a technology organization. Technology no longer is overhead. Technology is something that moves the mission forward. Non-profits need to evolve. Non-profits need to get trained up. Working with an organization like TechSoup helps me get one step closer to hearing the questions that actually are happening out in the sector and think about how I could best serve those questions with my solutions or with something that we haven't even thought of yet. Where we see it going is much more focused on addressing the question that a non-profit has when they're coming in. One of the themes that we have there was understanding that we needed to help organizations move to more resilient solutions. So I think we built some of the bedrock of the programs that we wanted to launch. Hopefully that helped some organizations be able to weather kind of the pandemic a little better. So when we look back at that year right after the summit, the idea that it is a network, not a franchise, right? It's not that everybody's doing the exact same thing everywhere, but they're bringing their best capabilities and strength into this joint effort. We need to make each other smart about what is needed to have success. Later in that year, in 2019, I went to Europe and I actually visited the tech sub team in Italy, the partner in Germany. These ideas of marketing boot camps that we've done that started in Africa, we all had a real concrete idea that stemmed out of a conversation we had in the same room. A lot of the content of the summit was about preparing us as a network to guide us to this area of more cloud and more services and training and other new ways of bringing value to the community that depends on us. And many of them proved to be excellent for what was to come in the following year, which of course none of us could have known. You know, looking ahead now to this year's summit, it's gonna be a little different. How do you feel about the setup for doing it virtually? You know, there's part of doing it virtually, it's just this like giant math problem. It's like, okay, there are gonna be some people that are like snumbling through their first cup of coffee and other people that have already worked and folded in and they're ready for bed. An online meeting is still a meeting, it's still a connection and we need those more than ever. Under ideal circumstances, we would love to be able to get everybody to San Francisco to do what we did two years ago. But we can still see each other, share and we can connect and we can reflect together. There are a couple of positives to doing it this way. The only one is that we're gonna be able to get more people engaged this time. Having all these events in a virtual format, I think it has democratized the access to knowledge and to information. Two years ago, it was four of us going to the summit, which is a lot. But right now, potentially, all of Makaya's team could participate in the summit. Sometimes in the virtual meetings, you can do that a little bit more there's not the hub, there's not the interruption. The critical piece is what happened in their world? What happened to the audiences they were serving during this year? During this summit, I'm just really excited to see all the work that you all have been doing over the last two years. I mean, the world has changed, the world has changed dramatically. And I'm looking forward to sort of all of us checking in. I feel just confident that it will be that same exchange of ideas, which is what we look for. We need to find our way and it's always better to do it together. It's really a moment right now that is unlike any other moment that most of us have lived through. The pandemic is very much real and still going on. But I think it's a good moment as well to adapt and reflect. I will be just absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to hear from so many people across the network. We're doing some global sessions where everybody in the world is going to be online at the same time. And so we'll have that sense of being together. The theme of this summit is to create resiliency and to engage community. We're in a process now of a real rapid transformation. And this is a global gathering that will bring unique perspectives both from the local level and also globally together. My expectations are that we're going to have a lot of good conversations. I'm open and excited to the virtual format. Hopefully that brings a more diversity of, you know, team members who are able to participate in some ways. It's also an extended period of time together to think about this big project we're all engaged with. I think we all are on the right path together and we've got these shared values and shared dreams. It is the highlight of my year. I'm really looking forward to just reconnecting and connecting with new people. This might be a little saddish, but I'm especially excited to see our partners because, for example, I don't know, I really miss the Romanian team. We used to do a lot of projects together. I am sure that whenever I see a familiar face, maybe the team from Italy, I'm sure we're going to chat and we're going to have side conversations. My favorite part of the summit each time is learning what the partners are doing, learning what they're focused on, learning some of the incredible initiatives that they're working on, and some of the real social issues that they're responding to within their own countries. We are hoping that we'll be able to open up to those conversations in supporting last-mile connectivity. So again, during this pandemic, there was also that fear of uncertainty. So what next for the partnerships? I'm looking forward to from the knowledge of where the organization is and what other people are doing, maybe getting inspiration for my own work. I do the work that I do because I'd rather have hope that the world can be a different and better place. Just the idea that everybody has the same reason that they're here is so uplifting and so validating. This is the profitable thing for you. If you work and associate you on the community, you gain the impact. One of the biggest reasons that I work in this field is, first of all, I want to have a just society, having really diverse opinions to be respected, not just my work, but as my life. I actually find it pretty rewarding to do, so that's probably the why. I feel really, really good about the fact that you're helping, that you're making a small difference in an organization that's going to do so many other amazing things for society and for the sector. I also work here because I find it offensive that there are people that go to bed without enough to eat and without a safe place to sleep and without justice systems that work for them and without access to information. And I don't want to work on any one of those issues. I want to work on all of them. And that's what I get to do here. Aqua. Welcome to the Tech School Global Network, Welcome to the Tech School Global Network Summit, 2021. And on that very warm note of welcome, it is my singular honor and pleasure to introduce to you the Tech Soup CEO, Rebecca Masisak. Thank you, Nana, for the warm introduction. Excuse me. For the warm introduction and the warm introduction of Rebecca Masisak. Thank you, Nana, for the warm introduction, excuse me, for the warm introduction. And thank you all for joining us today from around the world. The last two years have brought me to focus the interconnectedness of the world and the systemic challenges we face. And they have underscored the importance of the work we do together to build a dynamic bridge that leverages technology and innovation for connections in pursuit of a more equitable planet. It has been difficult in many ways, but even more so for those on the edges of society, informal workers, people who are oppressed by their governments, those not part of the dominant systems. So many who relied on the frontline connections that local community organizations and caring community members provide. The Tech Soup Global Network reaches those frontlines with digital tools and resources from hundreds of contributors like tech companies and foundations. Collectively, this network has created and operated a trusted supply chain for vital infrastructure to power the organizations that are the community's safety nets. As the pandemic evolved, I found a growing number of reasons to be heartbroken and angry. It continues to feel overwhelming. Even so, this unique time has taught us a lot. To those of us pursuing social missions, it is abundantly clear that our work matters more than ever. Faced with more than 50% increases in demand and resource challenges, leaders of food banks got creative and perseverance prevailed. Other nonprofits repurposed their facilities or programs to fill local gaps for food or COVID testing. The ultimate safety net, the leaders of civil society organizations and movements remain at the epicenter of local needs, remain at the epicenter of local needs. The cooperation, innovation, and passion demonstrated brought me hope and inspiration and reinforced the need for our programs. To sustain this global need, the TechSoup network and its contributors saw monthly increases up to 10 times former volumes for hardware, mobile hotspots, and cloud software. TechSoup courses went from 3,000 learners from 29 countries to 41,000 in 99 countries in a five week period. TechSoup's contributors rose to the challenge by creating digital tools or training to support remote situations and contributing to TechSoup's COVID Recovery Fund of 1.9 million, which helped thousands of organizations modernize and stay secure. NGO Source saw a 60% increase in requests for equivalency determinations to support grant making from the US to civil society organizations around the world, including one determination that was used by six funders to support CEPI, the Global Vaccine Collaborative launched at the World Economic Forum. Across the network, we met this volume of requests and innovated in real time to address emergent needs. All the while, we ourselves needed to find new ways to be effective working from home. This network and our special form of collaborations proved remarkably resilient. Digital was in demand, enabling the necessary new ways of connecting and communicating, bringing emotional support, vital information and resources for service delivery. With funding from Okta, this network and other nonprofit partners fielded a survey of more than 11,000 nonprofits across 135 countries. 72% indicated a need to rethink delivery of their services due to the pandemic. Although those who had a digital strategy in place felt a less negative impact. Across all organizations, the digital adoption most frequently reported was for communications and collaboration tools. Local stories illustrate that organizations showed extraordinary leadership. The San Francisco nonprofit, Palmer Roy Recreation and Rehabilitation Center provides direct services for individuals with disabilities. They went from a staff and community with little access to computers and few digital skills to online classes and a new collaboration to deliver online occupational therapy lessons for parents. And in Poland, Society for the Promotion of Physical Culture used remote working digital tools to move Akito trainings online, describing the results as keeping the human connection by creating the ability to see, participate and belong. The caring connections and collaboration enabled by digital proved transformative across communities. This network added new ways for local community members to engage. TechSoup Italy's Facebook Live coffee chats provided cohesion and information during the worst days. In two months, CDI Chile and Wingo Argentina collaborated to move an in-person event previously delayed due to civic unrest to a virtual format with attendees across five countries. Working with Funky Citizens in Romania, we adapted our Worker Connect app designed by Caravan Studios to protect the rights of migrant workers in the Gulf to provide public healthcare staff a way to report anonymously on their working conditions. Japan NPO Center and Caravan Studios collaborated to train participants from across Japan in participatory design methodologies online instead of in-person as they expected. Network innovation continued and accelerated. Dozens of partners and NGOs helped design the customer experience for our next generation marketplace and its first offer, a food security digital solution. They spent thousands of hours in remote collaboration supported by a range of tools helping us create, share and store assets in the cloud. The network created global infrastructure to support cloud licensing and services with regional support centers and has already reached 47,000 nonprofits with cloud solutions and services. In Germany, Hausstiftens invested in a program with network-wide potential, a partner for good portal designed to enable NGO engagement through the network's marketplace APIs. Sharing knowledge, new ways of working, gaining skills, all of these experiences brought us closer to the nonprofits who rely on us. We learned more about adopting digital tools ourselves and their potential for collaboration and innovation. While digital can be an important enabler for human connections, it is the humans involved who will need to make it inclusive and safe. Our experiences have also validated the relevance of our five strategic initiatives. The investments we made as a network with the support of our donors, customers and investors helped ensure we had the capacities and resilience to respond and lead with creativity. I am excited about where we will go over the next few years from transactions to relationships. We'll broaden the role of donors and nonprofits, each contributing, providing insights and connections and opening our marketplace to more movements and apps and individuals. From tech marketplace to digital enablement for solutions. From validation services to data insights. From apps for good to digital solutions. Our business processes and cooperative technology platform investments will put stakeholders at the center, increase engagement and enable them to continually gain value. This direction truly re-energizes me. We can build on all we've done, learn from what we could do better and innovate boldly to deliver on our loftiest dreams. A connected experience of digital enablement and collaborations that bring unparalleled innovation at scale for the diverse and fragmented yet highly localized tapestry that is global civil society. I hope you will make the most of this event. Take the chance to learn more about key network themes such as the new marketplace, digital solutions, membership models, data insights and building a more inclusive view of civil society. Participate in sessions devoted to sharing progress and learnings, reimagine our way forward together as we celebrate our successes. I am filled with gratitude for this community. I feel humbled to play a leadership role in this ever more amazing ecosystem of leaders. You all demonstrate what's possible with sustained attention to collaboration at scale. How can we best build capacity for the millions of small local community led efforts to be strong collaborators? Let's use this moment to reflect on the important work ahead captured by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Change will be a constant. Together, we strengthen the fabric of society's safety net by making innovation possible where needs are the greatest, where it won't always be easy or commercially viable. We have an opportunity, engage community and create resilience. And I genuinely look forward to working side by side with all of you for the next stage of the journey. Thank you. And please find me later in the lounge at the river, well, the river table, that is. And now it's my great pleasure to welcome Janice Evans Page, CEO of Tides Network. Tides has managed more than $4 billion in global grant making and project-based initiatives since 1976 and continues to grow and mobilize to accelerate social impact. Tides has also scaled more than 1,400 social ventures and fueled social change in more than 140 countries. Janice has been a purpose-driven executive leader for HB, AT&T and Fossil Group. She serves on an array of boards, including IDO.org, AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum and Southern New Hampshire University, as well as others. She has received numerous honors for her commitment to inclusion and impact. One of my favorites is that she was among the partners who inspired Unreasonable Future and has advised numerous unreasonable companies. She has been described as an empowering force and you're about to find out why, as she moderates our panel on resilient network leadership. Up to you, Janice. Thank you so much, Rebecca. Much, much gratitude to join all of you today and being amongst new friends and old friends, all of whom are change leaders who embrace the 2021 TechSoup global network theme, engage communities, create resilience, and getting networked.  Resilient leadership, such a timely thing. Much resiliency on my part this morning when my wifi didn't come up. Resiliency plus leadership have shown up in every sector around the world and continues to show up during the past year and a half. If you are a parent who had to teach your child at home during the past year, you demonstrated resilient leadership just as much as any CEO that I know. We all demonstrated resilient leadership in some way. This was a year where we all got to lean in and discover that superpower. While I can cite numerous resilient milestones during my career, many were building blocks during my 20 plus years working in Silicon Valley. Little did I know that I was preparing for a year like no other. While all of us on the front lines addressing social impact and social justice really ensured that our voices are heard. I think for me it was definitely a turning point to know that of all the things I was working on last year was the year that was really gonna matter. As the only black officer at my previous company, my resiliency was challenged and elevated with an unwavering commitment to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. That experience hit me differently because I was no longer, it was no longer just about being the best in the best position in my company or my company being the best for that matter. It was deeply personal. My community was suffering. Many questions came to mind in terms of my own resiliency. How am I gonna build community internally and externally? How can I change the system? Change all of these systems such that others aren't the only one as I was feeling last year. How is this work, my work, creating sustainable solutions for the next generation? This required a lot of introspection and yes, a lot of resilient leadership. Not compromising, not apologizing and not acquiescing for doing what I knew was right. I had no idea that I was really preparing for what would become my ultimate resiliency assignment saying yes to becoming the CEO of Tides. I now have the honor of introducing you to thought leaders all of whom are resilient leaders who are driving system change in their respective spaces. I know that everyone on this panel brings with them their own models of resilience, their own aha moments as I've had many that have defined their resiliency superpowers. So allow me to introduce you to each one of them. Melvin Cibole joined TechSoup as managing director after last year after nearly 10 years as a leader with the Kenya Community Development Foundation, a TechSoup global network partner since 2015. He brings more than 14 years of progressive experience working with development organizations situated in Kenya that have a global presence and reach. Melvin is joining us today from Nairobi, Kenya. Jessamine Chen drives VMware's social impact strategy focused on nonprofit digital transformation. Using software powers the world's complex digital infrastructure. The company's cloud app modernization, networking, security and digital workspace offerings help customers deliver any application on any cloud across any device. Jessica also leads VMware citizen philanthropy approach to giving inspiring VMware's 33,000 global employees to be active citizens in their communities. She's connecting today from San Francisco, May area. Iliana Nicolova is CEO at workshop for state initiative foundation WCIF. In 15 years of operation, WCIF has funded more than 1100 projects of civil groups and organizations in the sphere of local development. WCIF has become one of the biggest grant-making foundations in Bulgaria. She has been appointed as EU ambassador of the European pillar of social rights and European citizens initiative with the last two EU commissions. WCIF has been a TechSoup global network partner since 2009. She's joining us today from Sofia Bulgaria, sorry, haven't had my coffee yet today. David Sengokoya, David is the head of civil society and social justice at the World Economic Forum. Based in Geneva, he is responsible for the forum's engagement with civil society and nonprofit organizations globally. And additionally, he has action initiatives and multi-stakeholder partnerships on social justice, sustainability and the sustainable development goals. In partnership with marginalized communities and organizations at the frontlines of equity and social justice. And last but certainly not least is Li Yi Xiao who leads Frontier Foundation's TechSoup program in Taiwan, helping nonprofit organizations after frontlines creating strategies for digital inclusion and developing relevant content for the community. For over 25 years or 27 years, Frontier Foundation has ensured that minorities can connect to the internet and participatory discussions with organizations. Frontier Foundation has been a TechSoup global network partner since 2008. And Li is fascinated by the power of people. She was the chairperson of Taiwan LGBT Pride in 2020, which drew over 130,000 people to join in the march. She believes that no matter how fancy the materials and technology are, we humans always have eternal soul issues. And she is joining us today from Taipei City. Welcome to all of our illustrious panelists. So I know we wanna get started, but I thought that the group might wanna know what do we mean? We, this panel, mean by resilient leadership. We spent some time talking about that. And so our working definition of resilient leadership is leadership that promotes and enables complex systems to function and thrive in the face of a major crisis or challenge. So with that, I'm gonna go ahead and kick off a question for the entire group. Where have you seen a leader step up to provide voice in the face of local or global challenges? Hey, Melvin, we're gonna start with you. Thank you, Janice. Again, a pleasure to be part of this very powerful panel. For me, it was actually from a very unlikely source. It was actually a private foundation that came to mind when I thought about leadership, especially during this difficult time. And this foundation runs, it actually has a company that exports foodstuffs to Europe and beyond. So during that particular time, again, because there are no flights happening, most of the produce that they had was going to waste. So initially out of necessity, they would distribute food to homes or to informal settlements. But within weeks, they were able to transform this for-profit business into a social enterprise. So beyond just distributing the foodstuffs to the informal sector, they almost started having a supply chain where women would go get the produce and go and sell at a discounted rate within the informal settlements. The ones who are not able to purchase the products then were given as a donation. And from then on, we've seen now the organization now diversify just from their export business while creating livelihoods for more than 2,000 women and women groups. To me, that I thought was very transformative where an idea out of necessity can lead to much bigger gains at a community level. Thank you, Melvin. Just a minute, I'm gonna ask you the same question. Where have you seen a leader step up to provide voice in the face of local or global challenges? Yeah, well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to join the panel with everyone today. You know, as I think about this, I've really been inspired by Erin Felter at Okta and what her team is doing to strengthen the ecosystem around capacity building, especially from a technology lens. And what comes to mind for me is their nonprofit technology fellowship that really focuses on supporting the thought leaders that are in civil society. And so in this way, what really stands out for me is that they're amplifying the voices of the fellows who are doing the work. And that feels quite powerful, given the most recent context these past two years. Thank you. I too know Erin. It's a pleasure to partner with her. Iliana, same question. Thank you for having me. Good morning to San Francisco and good afternoon to all the others who that are in Europe. Actually, this is a very difficult question because we are working in a very different and difficult times and the challenges that have been imposed by the crisis have forced us to act differently. I would like to give the example of a fund that our organization set because of the pandemic as a response of the COVID crisis in Bulgaria. Usually we are doing run making to civil society organizations along as individual organization. But the COVID crisis made us think differently and we managed to engage two other actually flagship organizations for Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Donors Forum and the National Network for Children. And we established a fund that from the start of the idea to the first ground that we were launched in between fundraising we managed to have it for only two months. This was a quick response to the need of the communities we are serving and working with. And I think that this is a good example of resilient leadership that is trying to bring stakeholders and identify supporters out of the box which usually they are not facing challenges and they are not working with. So for me this was a great example of immediate and basic needs supports to the mostly needed groups in communities. And it was also included because we have a whole year when the children were out of school actually they are working online and we managed to identify possibilities to bridge the gap of digital divide giving the possibilities to families to get equipment and subscription for internet so they to be able to the children to continue to attend schools. So for me the leadership is getting Alice and building trust in community. Thank you, thank you. Same question, David. Super, thank you so much for having me. The World Economic Forum is the international organization for public-private cooperation. So I'll give a global example of something that I got to see front-hand. This is, we brought together 25 leaders from across civil society, business, government six months after the pandemic around what we call a global future council on systemic inequalities and social cohesion putting in the ground that this needs to be on the global agenda. And from these leaders, it's been a journey act for the last almost year as you've had all the different things that have happened around the world related to the pandemic. And you've seen, I've been able to see these leaders think deeply about what's needed during and beyond the pandemic how to grapple with intersectionality in a real practical way. And even as there's a space, right? Of course, everyone wants to talk about their own initiatives everyone wants to talk about what they're doing. There's that feeling of even with our best efforts where else do we want to go? What's that bigger vision? And how do we invite other people into that around the world from different contexts? So it's been really great to see that and to see that sort of willingness to open up from our different partners. Thank you, David. And Lee, we want to hear your point of view as well. Please share. Hello. It's nice to have me here. And I think in Taiwan we are quite lucky because the pandemic for us arrived maybe a year later than most of us, most of you. So I think during this time since the pandemic erupted this May I think I find that almost everyone has the potential to be a leader in my thought. Because people when they are in the right position then they don't know their potential but when the crisis happens then we find that even the most normal people can provide his or her help during the pandemic. And of course in our government we have Audrey Tom. She's a very special people because she's the one that for the civic hack movement she hacks into the government. So she also provides a lot of IT advices and assistance and the needs and collaborate with the government and the open source community and all the big cooperates together. And of course all the engineers are from the fields. So that's what I observed in Taiwan. Thank you. Thank you. So I'd like to zoom in on some of your experiences so we can showcase how each of you have been able to implement resilient leadership at different levels from local to global. So we're gonna go in opposite order this time. So Lee you're on. Because you work with nonprofit organizations at the front lines you are truly on the front lines. Let's talk about grassroots collaboration. Many of you have been focused on resilience for years. How does an organization's established history and trust play in building leadership that withstands shocks? I think for us I think because our frontier foundation has been established nearly 30 years I think and I think when people think of us they know they get the deep impression that oh when you think of MPO and the technology and you think of frontier foundation. And of course we know that technology is just the medium. It's the services, the advocacy, the mission and all these the services we give that matters. So I think for us of course we are not you know super woman or superman that we are capable of all the technology but we care about the trends. And you know that in Taiwan like many Asian countries we often face a lot of nature disasters and in Taiwan because of our special political situation we often meet a lot of crisis. So for us I think our role is to support older NGOs and the communities without any condition. And when people think of they need some solution they can come to us and we can try to collaborate with the best advisors and we try to give them simple and agile solution to them. So I think of course it seems like we are quite stable organization but we are very flexible. And we also focus on all those you know facilitation method and in the spirit of the facilitation open minded and that together the wisdom of everybody is very important. So I think in that way collaboration and fighting together are what we think we can do to build leadership that withstands the pandemic. Thank you. And I don't know I think you are a superhero. So let me just say that. Illiana shifting gears to the topic of civil society issues. Civic spaces are closing and civil society is often under attack. Who has stood up for civil society and what have we learned from them? Actually shrinking civil space is a trend that is spread in Central and Eastern Europe and probably elsewhere in the world in the last several years. And when I'm talking about shrinking civil space I mean different measures that prevent civil society organizations and their members from implementing actions towards achieving their democratic goals. And this is very difficult situation. Bulgaria unfortunately is progressing in that direction very quickly. And the last year we have observed a very difficult situation when the part of the governing coalition entered an amendment of the law of the civil society organizations, the NGO law where they try to introduce the concept of foreign agents. This is something that we have observed in Russia and that has happened in Hungary and Bulgaria were trying to follow that steps. In the midst of the crisis on July 1st actually they sent to the parliament this amendment. And what happened is that the civil society organizations managed to organize huge company or coalitions to fight against this. This was the first attempt in which the civil society in Bulgaria managed to attract different stakeholders to support their fight. CSO managed to attract citizens, individual citizens, media, the progressive media, foreign country ambassadors and international organizations. There were a huge flow of opposition, and opposition letters sent to the parliament. One of each, more than 26 such letters were sent and some of them were signed by, for example, 300 organizations, which is the biggest number of appeals signed by one organization. When I'm speaking about the shrinking civil space, I would like to say that from that experience that we gained in last summer, we learned some very important lessons. The first one is that trust is something that really matters in such process. And building trust is a big task for civil society organizations and it's a very important leadership quality. People trust other people and that does their, and they trust the people's organizations rather than organizations to people. Stable relations support the resilient leadership and we have to invest into building this stable relations. Critical mass of stakeholders is also very good way to find and identify resilience actions. Business companies, which are not the usual suspects in such endeavors for civil society, could be a very important stakeholder and supporter and we need to attract them and to build relations with them. And one last but very important thing is the education, the education about democracy, about citizen's participation, about human rights, about the understanding of the concept of social justice in the wider society and in the next generation civic leaders is very important. We need to have a society that understand these concepts and are ready to support civil society organizations when they are fighting for social justice, for example. Also another important lesson is that empathy and solidarity in the society should be nurtured by civil society organization. So in the bad thing of shrinking civil society, there is a good sign and this is the trend that community members, civil society leaders are ready to address the challenges in different ways. Thank you. People trust other people, absolutely. I'd like to talk about collaborations for emergent needs. Melvin, you've seen many development initiatives focused on Africa. Do any stand out as collaborations that are having more success? What can we learn from them? What trends do you see in terms of organizations who are stepping out of their comfort zones to meet the emerging needs of our communities? And what barriers are constraining leadership? I know there's a lot to unpack there, but we love your perspectives. Thanks, Janice. Again, just to put perspective, I was privileged in the sense that I have a third eye. I was working for a national organization in Kenya when the pandemic struck and the transition to TechSoup much later. So at least I have perspective of both sides. But to be fair, there are many examples of initiatives that standard in Africa, be it improvement in healthcare or standards of living in terms of having livelihood programming. And all those are good. But to me, I perceive them as acts of charity. And again, not to be misconstrued, the charity is not a good thing, but I think justice is even better. So some of the things that I'm looking at in terms of programs that will stand the test of time would be programs that are based on ideologies. And one of the ideological issues that are being discussed now would be re-emerging aid or localization as it were. The only problem with localization in terms of language, it almost presupposes that those organizations have no exposure. So I don't usually imagine in aid. And conversations are happening. Very difficult conversations about race, conversations about inequality, conversations about women's rights, sexual harassment. And as those conversations are happening, at the very grassroots level, there was another movement that was coalescing itself. And it has been mentioned in different places. But again, to just give mention to it and give it primacy is what we call the conversation movement. People talking and connecting and discussing issues that perhaps have been very difficult. Conversations, journeys that you would know are very difficult like white supremacy. Conversations as the Black Lives Matter. Conversations on rights of women in terms of their reproductive rights. And these conversations are joined through race, they are joined through age groups, they are joined through identity. And they are more present because the condition is right. The thing that COVID did was to almost shine light to some of these inequalities that have always existed. And it was very clear that there needs to be a new paradigm shift. And how do you change the paradigm? By making the old obsolete and making the new ones stronger and more effective. So even as tech soup from the, from at least from where I sit, our role in terms of building a bridge, in terms of facilitating these spaces where these conversations are happening become very important going forward. Either promoting either naming these conversations, illuminating these conversations, nourishing these conversations with technology playing a very big role in promoting all this. Then you start now moving to a slightly higher level of justice. Where you see now we can come to the table, both as a founder or as a community that has always been relegated to a place of passivity discussing how best for the aid flow to go through. And the one thing that I noticed at that time because I was working at the community level, there was a lot of collective action. And to me, actually, if I look back, communities are the true leaders as it was because no one was rich enough to receive or poor enough to give. So there was almost an equalizer at that stage. And going forward, I tend to think most organizations that don't position themselves to promote these collective, these conversations that are happening and linking them with the resources for them to push these conversations even further while layering policy and legal structures for this to happen. But the biggest one I tend to think would be mindset. There should be a shift. Shift in terms of how we balance the power dynamics that exist. Shift in terms of some seeding the power. Yet within a sector we find ourselves almost at cross purposes. Some who are willing to shift the power, some who are still state as poor. But I tend to think going forward, it will be very clear, especially when communities are regaining their power, are able to speak out in a way that they've not spoken before. And then giving whatever it is, not just as an act of charity, but also as a force for charity. Thank you, Melvin. I think you and I are gonna be doing some powerful work together, to say the least. Jasmine, along those same lines, what infrastructure and capacity building do you think can support established and emerging leaders? Yeah, so while I'm a big fan of the importance of a digital foundation and leaders and organizations having a roadmap for their digital journey, I think in the context of the conversation of what Ileana spoke to around empathy and what Melvin just spoke to around sort of the conversation movement and justice, I would say the capacity building that really feels paramount is within oneself. And so regardless of if you're an emerging leader or an established leader, is we all feel that pressure to act and to respond. And that in urgent situations, it can be hard to really create that space to suspend disbelief, to suspend action. And I think the importance, I really believe in the importance of a pause, right? To tune out the distraction, to identify our bias, to acknowledge our assumptions and to take a moment to really be in solitude. And what I mean by that is sort of this idea of like introspection. It can include conversation with others, but sort of the deep concentrated focus and one's work. Because I feel like when we build that capacity from within, then we're able to sustain the marathon of this work and the space, and then also the increasing volatility, uncertainty and complexity that we as leaders within our communities now face. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica. David, I'd like to give you the final word before we take a question from our audience. What can companies and governments learn from civil society organizations? Sure. Thanks so much, Janice. Now, maybe again, just, you know, we're the World Economic Forum. We not only bring leaders from around the world together during our summits and of course our annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. But we work year-round to facilitate and accelerate the kinds of multi-stakeholder partnerships that are needed for the resilience that I think we're all talking about. So not obviously just the pandemic, but around climate change, systemic inequality, digital inclusions, et cetera. In my role, I essentially try to help facilitate partnerships and impact with over 300 civil society partners across our different initiatives and work and ensuring really importantly that we surface the strategic intelligence, the vision and the leadership that civil society has to offer to public-private cooperation. And on that, I just really wanna thank Rebecca, Marnie and Chris for their leadership as part of our platform and making that happen across our different initiatives. Maybe you're focusing on the pandemic. You know, this has been this moment where several of our different industry and government partners are no longer asking why, but how to engage with civil society as part of their journey as Melvin said, on reaching a higher level of justice. And I don't want to give the impression that this is happening across every company, across every government, but we're seeing some of those trends and we're thinking about our role in trying to help nurture that effectively with our civil society partners. You know, many business leaders were facing widespread uncertainty, limited capacities and a need for a new kind of leadership to drive those types of inclusive and equitable practices.  For many parts of the world. And during the pandemic, we saw increased openness from our partners to re-engage communities, to re-engage civil society in their own efforts to build back better. There's kind of an appetite, if you will, to figure out how to get it right when it comes to recognizing more fully the inequalities that they're seeing within our systems and then integrating social justice, not only in the workplace, but putting equity in action with communities. And yeah, so often civil society, our partners, they're well positioned to provide both innovative and inclusive solutions at the table. I can give a couple of examples of that. So of course, on the digital divide and connectivity, you know, TechSoup, Makaya, Rhizomatica, several other folks who have been speaking and providing leadership and connecting, you know, connected in Latin America and co-designing the right policies and capacity building that you need to scale solutions. We've been working with a group, Tandem Research in India and a few others to think about that stronger vision on designing, deploying and using technology in equitable partnerships with civil society and not just in sort of these superhero relationships with the big society actor in a big business, but actually with the diversity of civil society actors.  And then lastly, on social justice, again, you know, there's a lot of work that I'm sure many of you have seen in terms of the types of investments that are happening within business workplaces. But what, you know, what can civil society provide to that conversation? And it's sort of helping businesses in this moment apply that lens of equity, not only in the workplace, but in action with communities and civil society beyond the workplace. So we've seen, you know, businesses standing with civil society to take bolder steps. For example, in making investments in and with communities.  Seeing where they're trying to take further steps in integrating justice in supply chains and around living wage, looking at some of Unilever's work with IDH. So maybe my summary there is, you know, we're seeing momentum happening with business leaders and rethinking that engagement. And we've been really excited to see civil society step up to the table to help provide those innovative and inspirational solutions. Not ignoring the accountability that needs to happen, but rather trying to surface some progress and help them again reach that higher level of justice. Thank you, David. So we do have a question from the audience. So by all means anyone jump in. Given the definition that we provided earlier in terms of resilience, the question from one of our audience members is could panelists please provide examples of how resilient leadership has directly supported their organization or nonprofit or positively impacted was the question. Or it can be corporation. So by all means, Jessa, if you too would like to provide a perspective. Anyone? Well, I guess since I said, Jessa, not to put you on the spot. Yeah, I'm happy to speak to it. You know, for me, I would say in that context of the resilient leadership and sort of what I've seen over the last year and a half or so is sort of the emphasis on people, right? And the relationships and oftentimes with VMware, we talk about our culture of wellbeing. And so within that context, I think it's sort of as you think through, yes, we all have our mission or our goal or objectives and the importance of that. And then also recognizing the sustainability of our efforts as people, right? As our teams, as colleagues and within a broader community. And so I've seen that tangibly within my own organization and how our leadership continues to bring that to the forefront. And I think that's an important modeling because it's oftentimes glorified within communities to keep going, right? To be busy, to be, to really stretch ourselves. And I think that is at the heart of resilience is holding space for that. Thank you. Anyone else? I can go next. Thank you. Again, yeah, just again, almost likening the two environments that I was in. Resilience leadership, at least at that time, I worked for a grant making organization. But because of the situation that we found ourselves in, we had to throw away our development tag, our grant making tag and throw away the playbook and convert ourselves almost overnight to become a humanitarian organization. So that we're able to react fairly quick. We are nimble in terms of making decisions. And we look at communities because we reside with, we are nimble in terms of making decisions. And we look at communities because we reside within those communities on how best to either move the resources because resources was the biggest thing that they needed then. And just seeing how best can we incorporate some of the self-organizing that exists within communities? And they didn't need much. Most communities didn't need much. They just needed facilitation here in terms of data bundles or talk time for them to self-organize because ideally they would pick themselves in terms of who was the most at need. And I tend to think that's a practice that will continue being there. We'll start seeing bloodlines of specializations of organizations and we'll start seeing what in the development sector we are called generalists, although it has been, it has been connoted to mean you're not good enough or you're doing anything and everything. But I tend to think going forward will be more general in terms of providing spaces. We saw organizations, especially INGO, as we were throwing out our playbook, the big INGOs were still busy creating log frames and creating situational reports. Two months, three months into the COVID, yet you need that nimble kind of reaction for you to address some of the emerging needs. I think I talked about the conversation movement even within the TechSoup network. There's a lot of conversations happening from different partners on how best to respond and how best to show up. Because at some point, you won't just say technology is the answer to all this. We had to be very relevant. And we saw some partners and they mentioned that some are represented in this call, Jess and the TMTruist Foundation, Microsoft, who gave very flexible funds so that partners would address some of those needs based on their context. And again, it's one of those things that will continue being endeared, especially as organizations change their strategy. I don't think there's any organization that will continue with a strategy that created two years ago. Because of this pandemic, you almost have to reshape and reject the strategy that you're having. Thank you. I know we've been all talking about trust-based philanthropy for years. And I think last year we saw real evidence of that. I'm hopeful you saw those thumbs up also. I think we have one more question. Actually, no, it's a comment. So David, I hope that you saw the thumbs up, but we had Sam Barnard from Fomano in South Africa who basically said, love that. Love what you said. That governments and companies are no longer asking why, but how to engage with civil society. What is one thing that will be most important for that looking forward? So we have three more minutes. Anyone have a short answer to that question? Iliana, I'm looking at you just because you're at the top of my screen. Okay, because to follow on what we just talked, actually, we are also a grant-making organization, but I would like to focus on some other activities that we have been doing, and it is about the emerging leaders. I mean, nurturing the next generation of civic leaders. And I think that is very important. And I was trying to give the example of, we have an initiative that is called Next Generation Civic Leaders Initiative that trains leaders and provide mentors to them to help them to step up in response to the global or local challenges. And I would like to give the example of a lady that has been part of this initiative, and that is leading an LGBTI Resource Center that has been forced to close, and with the support of a mentor that she had, she managed to transform the work of the Resource Center online and to be of real help to LGBTI young people that have suffered humanitarian problems. And when I'm saying that, I really believe that there are millions of stories of inspirational leadership, but I think that we have to focus on the next generation. We need to mentor to help those people to be able to continue the work that we are doing, to follow their goals, to be brave enough to approach issues global or local in a different way. Because so far, we have been following some examples and trying to solve the issues, but probably it's time we to identify people that are ready to approach the issues in different way. And technologies are probably one of the things that we couldn't do. But also mentoring and nourishing, how to say, the readiness of those people to take challenge and to overcome all the hardship that the goal could accompany, it is very important. And for me, this is the most important thing of the current leaders, they to be able to somehow share their leadership and their resilience leadership to the next generation. That's why I think that this is probably the most important part of the leadership. Let me just say thank you, Eliana. I think that's the perfect, perfect way to end this important dialogue is, how do we enable and support, and in some case, get out of the way for the next generation. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I wanna thank all of you, all of the panelists today for your participation and your fierce, resilient leadership. It has truly been my honor to be in community today. And this is certainly the time that I think we will leave here, thinking about what needs to change in terms of this next chapter of resilient leadership. So with that, we actually will segue to our friend, Ken Sonoda, but once again, one final thank you. And I'm hopeful all of the audience here will join me in thanking the panelists today. So with that, Ken, it is my privilege to introduce you this morning, or morning for me still, good day for most of you. Ken is Vice President Network and Development with TechSoup. I think the topics we've covered have teed you up quite well, Ken. Thank you. Appreciate it. They sure have, Janice. Thank you so much.  And it's my honor to be in a role that serves the TechSoup Global Network and our amazing partner organizations around the world. So first off, I would like to thank our event partners for this year's TechSoup Global Network Summit. We are so grateful to you for providing support that enabled us to reimagine this year's summit as a virtual global event.  We couldn't do this without you. Thank you so much. And I am so excited to share with you today the TechSoup Global Network Leadership Awards, recognizing outstanding achievements, commitment and collaboration across the network. Less than a month ago, we sent out a request across the network for nominations and we received 37 of them across seven different award categories. These categories reflect the values of TechSoup Global Network and our shared mission. So the categories are, demonstrate resilience, engage communities, drive collaboration, strive for inclusion, promote trust, be resourceful and show inspirational leadership. I have to say it was incredibly inspiring to read all the nominations. There are so many stories of collaboration, leadership and resilience. It gave me an even deeper appreciation of the magnitude of the impact that we collectively have as a network. So we decided that these nomination stories are so inspiring that rather than selecting just a few of them for awards, we would like to recognize all of these incredible individuals and organizations over the course of the two weeks of the summit. We know that so much of the work that you do often doesn't get widely recognized and here's an opportunity to really celebrate your accomplishments. So before we get started, I'd like to ask for your help with something. So if we were all gathered in the same place physically today, we would have hundreds of people cheering loudly for each of the award winners. So we won't be able to do that today, but I still want to cheer very loudly for all of these awards. So I'm gonna cheer as loudly as I can here from California and I invite all of you to please join me. So when I give the cue, I'd like you to please cheer loudly enough so that we can hear all of your voices all the way around the world. So let's have some fun with this and play around with the virtual format here and let's get started. So it is my honor to share the first five award winners today and we will recognize 32 more in different ways during the summit. So first, I would like to recognize the work of one of our amazing partners in the category of promoting trust. When COVID-19 struck last year, Kenya Community Development Foundation, KCDF took action immediately, offering locally relevant courses to ensure nonprofits were able to learn how to continue operating remotely in the communities they serve. They took the lead and did extraordinary work to get remote courses to Kenyan NGOs very early in the pandemic. By showing relevance and agility during the pandemic period, KCDF continues to provide invaluable input in shaping TechSoup's courses as we broaden our offerings to nonprofits. So we would like to recognize Natasha Marigu and Lydia Wangeshi and the entire KCDF team for their work promoting trust and the health of civil society organizations during a very challenging time. So thank you. Let's hear a very loud round of applause for KCDF and team. Thank you so much Natasha and Lydia for everything that you do. So next, I would like to move to the category of engaging communities. And I'd like to recognize a TechSoup partner who is doing remarkable work with communities in his home country of Chile. This gentleman has had incredible results aligning his organization, CDI Chile, with TechSoup's mission. He has launched strong local projects with partners like Microsoft, such as an NGO mentorship program. He has worked with marginalized communities on job skills and he has offered a spirit of camaraderie and can do for collaboration for courses and Spanish language marketing at a regional level. I'm thrilled to be able to recognize Eugenio Vergara of CDI Chile and I would like for everybody to please give him a really loud round of applause. Thank you so much Eugenio. Okay, now I'd like to move to the category of demonstrating resilience and we know how much resilience was needed in our sector this year. I'd like to recognize two incredible leaders in Taiwan, one of whom you met already today. Xu Fang, Tsai, and Li Yi Xiao have demonstrated exceptional resilience in their leadership at Frontier Foundation during a period of rapid change. Their commitment to the TechSoup global network has been remarkable. Since the formation of TechSoup Taiwan in 2008, Xu Fang and Li Yi have been active participants in all TSG and activities regional and local, always making meaningful contributions to the network. They have been flexible in working through sustainable business models as well as experimenting with new projects and initiatives for TechSoup and the NGOs we serve. Their close connection to the NGO sector in Taiwan and their drive to support NGOs often under trying circumstances has been exemplary. So please join me in giving a big round of applause and thank you to Xu Fang, Tsai, and Li Yi Xiao and the Frontier Foundation. I think I can hear the applause all the way here in California. Thank you, Xu Fang and Li Yi, for everything that you do. So next, the next category recognizes inspirational leadership. And there are so many examples of inspiring leaders across our network. Today, I would like to recognize two of them, Kasper Bodano and Marie Tolstrop Hansen of Frieza, our partner in Denmark. Our footprint and impact in the Nordic region over the last couple of years has changed significantly with the departure of our Swedish partner social forum. Frieza has openly and enthusiastically embraced the challenge of taking on a regional role to help us navigate this period of change through the leadership of Kasper and in close collaboration with Marie, the TechSoup program manager. Their commitment and enthusiasm to work out, not just how to manage, but how also to grow our programs in impact in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland has been inspirational. So I'd like to please ask you to join me in applauding the inspirational leadership of Kasper, Marie, and Frieza. Terrific. And last but not least, the fifth category that I'd like to recognize is resourcefulness. Celebrating members of our global network who have championed resourceful solutions in service of civil society. Today we celebrate the work of our partner in Saudi Arabia, TechTrans, and their outstanding leadership team of Abdul Aziz Al-Hamadi, Hassan Al-Marif, Al-Hassan Al-Mashyaki, and Turkey Al-Shamari. TechTrans has been an exceptional partner in investing in TechSoup programs across the region. Aziz has built a stellar team to support our partnership. Haitham, the TechTrans CEO who has provided unwavering support of our collaboration. Al-Hassan, product and services director who plans and manages the TechSoup programs along with other products and services we offered to nonprofits in the region. And Turkey who is leading the operational side of TechSoup programs. We are so grateful to Aziz for his leadership while he served as TechTrans CEO and now as an active member of the TechTrans board. We would like to recognize the TechTrans team for consistently stepping forward to find resourceful solutions to the many opportunities for our partnership and for their leadership and vision and supporting TechSoup. So a big thank you to the team at TechTrans. And thank you to all of you for playing along and giving a big round of applause to our award winners. So looking forward to recognizing all of our leadership award nominees over the course of the next two weeks. If you go to the TSGN leadership awards booth during one of the networking breaks we have a slideshow there that recognizes and honors all of our nominees and we'll be recognizing more nominees at global sessions during the rest of the summit. During the meet and greet please look for me at the forest table. Next, I would like to introduce Catalina Escobar to take it from here. Catalina is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of TechSoup's partner organization in Columbia, Makaya. TechSoup is so fortunate that Makaya has been our partner in Columbia since 2014 and our partnership has grown dramatically in recent years. Makaya is the leading Columbia-based nonprofit building the social impact sector's capacity through technology innovation and international cooperation. In addition, Catalina serves as manager of TSL, TechSoup's Latin America Regional Center. She leads an amazing team of colleagues who support TechSoup's cloud solutions and services activity across the region. So welcome and take it away, Catalina. Thank you, Ken, and thank you for all the TechSoup team that has been doing an amazing job at organizing this summit, this virtual convening for the first time. So as Ken mentioned, my name is Catalina Escobar. I am one of the co-founders of Makaya. Makaya is an nonprofit based in Columbia that builds capacities for social development through technology innovation and cooperation. With the TechSoup programs, Makaya supports nonprofit organizations in 14 countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. And Makaya, at Makaya, we also host TechSoup, Latin. So I have the job at sort of closing this session and telling you what's next. So be prepared for the next session for me and Greta, and I'm really looking forward to it. So talking about resilience in Columbia, we do know about resilience. Our country and Medellin, where I live, have gone through a lot for many years. And as we speak, we're still dealing with the highest COVID peak and social protests. So moving forward, we would need more than ever to engage communities, create resilience, and get network. Some thoughts from this opening session. Digital is no longer an option for CSOs and for communities. However, tech and digital can also increase gaps. It's our responsibility to make sure no community and nonprofit is left behind. The world is now a level playing field, and this is great news. If with leadership, innovation, and adaptation, we make sure that data, technology, and information contribute to social and economic development. From Rebecca's opening remarks, my great takeaways is that collective action, our network, the work that we all do and the human connections are more relevant than ever as we move to relationships, solutions, digital engagement, and enablement. From the panel, we heard great samples, great examples of leadership, resilience, and collaboration in different challenging situations around the world. These stories serve as an inspiration to me, and I'm looking forward to talking to all the panelists and all of you about the actions that we can do together. I am very happy to be part of this network that every day feels more like a family. The good news is that the summit is just getting started. So we will have a lot of spaces and places to talk in the next weeks. So what's next? Make sure to check the TechSoup Global Network Summit schedule on air meet. Tomorrow, we will have a variety of cross-regional sessions. Friday is a partner connection day, and Monday, the 21st, is the next global day where we will gather together to focus on building the TechSoup Global Network's new marketplace, discuss the power of community, membership models, global data handling service, insights from user experience search, and much more. Now, for what's the meet and greet? For many people, the favorite part of the summits, for me, is one of the favorite parts of the summits, so everybody should grab a coffee for the next session so we can have like the coffee spaces in what used to be the physical summit, and this is a chance to meet with all friends and to make new connections. Remember the energy of the video that we saw today? It was a really exciting video, so let's continue that energy and make this summit as memorable as the others. Of course, we have to create it in a virtual space, but the air meet platform has all the tools we need to collaborate and to chat and to express our emotions and to talk to our friends, our colleagues. So here's how it works. When I finish talking, this session will send us to the reception area. From there, we will all click at the top of the word lounge. It's very important, click on the word lounge. Then you will see the tables, as you would see in a conference room, and then simply find a table where you want to go. Again, it's like in a physical space. So you go, find a table and take a seat. Each table can fit up to eight people. We will be on video and we will be able to chat, to say hello and to connect again, as if we were in San Francisco or in Medellin because remember the next summit was going to be in Medellin. So let's imagine we are all in Medellin or in San Francisco. You can stay as long as you want in any table or find another table to meet other people. Keep in mind that there's no video filters on air meet, so everybody will see your background and your remote workspace. You can see who is at each table before you sit down again, as if we were in a conference room. I would love to talk to you. I will be at the table called mountain. So I'm super happy and excited to be here again. I look forward to talking to all of you. And remember, this is just getting started. We're gonna have the best two weeks together as we have always done at the TechSoup Global Summit. Thank you so much.