Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, and a warm welcome to this conversation that engages with technology cooperation in the fourth industrial revolution. This is indeed a very important theme that all of us must engage with in 2022, and this is a good time for us to learn from the past two years and build on that. To do that, we have a very eminent panel with us today. We have Hans Wesberg, Chairman and CEO for Eisen Communications and Chair of the Edison Alliance, the work that he's doing with the forum. We have Sunil Bharti-Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, a very eminent name in the digital sector, someone who's been engaged with the forum for a very long time, and Minister Pola Ingapire from a very dynamic country of Ravanda, where she's in charge of information and communication technologies and innovation. Before we move to the business end of this discussion, let me at this point invite all our online participants to engage with us via the Slido QR code on your screens. Please point the smartphone at the QR code, follow the link, and select the tech cooperation session, and do send in your questions and comments for the excellent speakers we have with us on this panel. We will first invite our speakers to briefly share their thoughts on the theme and the prognosis for the year ahead. I will thereafter pose a few questions and engage the panelists in a conversation, and then bring in audience comments and interventions into the mix. Please feel free to pose your questions as they occur to you, and we will try and include them in the conversation. But before I ask the panelists to share their opening thoughts, let me share some framing observations. It would be safe to say that the need for tech cooperation has never been greater. As businesses, societies and individuals, we have never been more dependent on technology, and indeed on our digital platforms. The pandemic has only accelerated this reliance. We have used innovation in responding to the pandemic. For example, the tech-enabled vaccine efforts, we have relied on technology for our livelihoods during the pandemic, what we call the work from home age. And of course, we rely on the digital for connecting as families and communities. For example, the panel discussion today, that we are all a part of, we can all agree that making technology available to all has to be a global imperative in the day ahead. And therefore, cooperation becomes crucial to offer access at appropriate price points to include many who have been underserved until now. And we need to do this at scale and with speed in a manner that fosters confidence among all stakeholders. The global south and the emerging economies will experience their largest transformations in the fourth industrial revolution. For these countries, partnerships are essential to meet their development priorities and indeed their growth aspirations. Trust in technology will be vital. And without trust, the benefits of innovation will be lost. The global vaccine story is indeed a good case in point. Vaccine adoption by societies is clearly a function of trust in innovation and of course, communication strategies that national governments have deployed. We have to do this at a time when globalization is facing very strong headwinds. Supply chains, trade, services, raw materials are all becoming part of national security assessments and indeed of parochial politics. The sector and domain has already been weaponized by some actors, both state and non-state. And therefore, as we enter 2022, a new year, we must ponder on how the world can respond to this new moment that sees returns of gates and fences in our global landscape. And in this discussion, we seek to do just that. Let me now invite our panelists to deliver their opening remarks, brief opening remarks for perhaps a couple of minutes. And let me start by Hans Vestberg, the proceedings for this evening. Hans, over to you. Thank you very much, Amir. And great to be here to discuss such an important topic. I will try to keep it brief, but I think that, Amir, you talked about a couple of very important things. The pandemic has really showed how important to be digital connected. We have probably leapfrogged five to seven years when it comes to the digital transformation. Today, it's a necessity to work from home or do healthcare, digital, online banking. Everything is sort of set up for that. And that is, of course, a very important piece of what we see today. This is, of course, posting, as Amir said, also a risk of more disparity in our society. As if you are not connected, you cannot get access to some of these important services. Today, in our society, it shouldn't matter where you're born or where you live or where you come from. You should have the same opportunity. And one of those opportunities, of course, is bridging the technology gap. Today, we have 3.6 billion people that are not connected, not part of the Internet. However, 85% of those people actually have broadband coverage. That tells you a little bit about the story we need to work with. But it's also 2 billion people that doesn't have healthcare. 1.7 billion doesn't have a bank account and more than 260 million, million kids that have no education. To build the word with brick and mortar is going to be hard to see that everybody has the same opportunities. Basically impossible. We need to use the 21st century infrastructure, which is mobility, broadband and cloud services in order to get it accessible, affordable, and have the right application and scalability. That's why we together with World Economic Forum decided in the beginning of last year to form the Edison Alliance. The Edison Alliance is a group of some 45 multi-discipline people, champions we call them, from private, public education, from academia. And what we decided was we wanted to change the life of 1 billion people by having affordable, accessible, digital inclusion. Focusing on education, healthcare, and financial inclusion firstly. We have had great progress so far with all the people coming together from all academia, public and private to find these solutions. But once again, I mean, for me, this is a moment in time where this infrastructure is so crucial. It's not the good to have to be connected. It's actually a human right to be connected because that will actually create a much better world and much equal world and everybody has the same chance. That's the backdrop we created Edison Alliance. Thank you Hans, I'm going to quiz you on that in a moment. I'll come back to you. Let me now turn it over to Mrs. Sunil Bharti Mittal for his opening remarks. Thank you, Samir. Hans, my very dear old friend has set the stage and really mentioned all the key points that are important for our discussion today. But in my own opinion, if I may add, the fourth industrial revolution which came upon us in the last few years has truly now shown itself in this last two, two and a half years to be the only possible way to take away the poverty of the world, to support all the SDG goals that UN has set up by 2030, there is no other way but for us to serve the society, but in a very strong digital infrastructure that needs to be provided across the entire globe. Hans is right, billions of people are still not on internet. And why are they not on internet? Of course, partly because they don't have the coverage, but many people have the coverage, but not affordability. So in today's session, we are also going to talk about affordability. If a country like India can provide very high quality, large dollars of data per month at $3, there's no reason why we can't carry this through into Africa and marginalize parts of the world where affordability is an issue. So we will talk about affordability today as well. Then whatever we would do as an industry, whether it's Verizon or it's Airtel and many, many hundreds of other operators and mobile broadband providers and fixed providers, we will still not be able to reach the last billion. They are in places which are almost impossible to cover by fiber, even with very large amounts of investments, we can't cover them through radio networks. And to do all that, about $425 billion are required in the next nine years, so that we have ubiquitous coverage for every citizen of this world. Thankfully, the advent of Leo-based constellations of satellites is coming as a savior for the last one billion. We will be, and we are not talking about many years into the future. You're talking about months from now, we will be able to cover every square inch of the world, be that oceans, be that mountains, be that forests or deserts, every square inch of the world will be covered. But satellite communication is expensive. It requires expensive ground and user terminals. This is where again, some of the players in the digital ecosystem, the governments, will have to all come together to provide affordability to those who may otherwise never get connected. So I will rest at that and we'll cover these points going forward. And Mr. Mittal, I'm going to ask you on how can corporations shape this ambition that you've just outlined? And what is the specifics of that cooperation? Let me now turn to Minister Paula Ngabeere from Rwanda for her very important perspective on the theme of this panel. Madam Minister, over to you. Thank you, Sir Miran. Thank you for having us this afternoon. I think both Hans and Sunil have set the stage for the composition we're going to have in the next couple of minutes. As we think about technology cooperation in the fourth industrial revolution, what we're going to be looking at is how cooperation partnerships are so essential to tackling some of the global issues and one being the COVID-19 pandemic that we're all going through. And so I think for many governments similarly to Rwanda is that we are all thinking about recovery in the year ahead. And while we're doing that, we're already looking at what are those challenges that have been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, both Sunil and Hans did highlight access, adoption, affordability. And these are the kind of common challenges that we are all grappling with, maybe at different scales. And maybe for some of us highlighting some parts of these challenges more than the other parts of the world. But again, what we're also going to be focused on in the year ahead is how do we safeguard some of the gains that have been realized from this cooperation that we've seen manifesting globally, but also a cooperation that we've also seen in our local jurisdictions happening across the board. Hans did talk about the Edson Alliance, which has championed the 1 billion lives challenge that is already going on. We've focused on about three areas, access to quality education, financial inclusion, as well as education, financial inclusion, as well as agriculture. And so one of the things we're looking at before I close off on this is the lighthouse countries. And what we're looking to do is how do we create a network of like-minded countries that are able to galvanize the partnerships and collaborations that we need to sort of drive the digital transformation that we need to see across the board. Really looking at the commitments that the network under Edson Alliance has created to drive these kind of partnerships. So as I close on my remarks, the key things that we're going to be looking at is how do we inspire technology transfer across the different jurisdictions? How do we enable the right skills that are needed to drive this kind of transformation? How do we unlock innovative financing models that are going to drive accelerated implementation? And last year's policymakers, how do we put in place an enabling policy and regulatory environment that is going to nurture this kind of innovations across the board? So in a nutshell, I think these are some of the things that we're going to be focused on and it's such a timely conversation. Thank you, Madam Minister. Hans, let me turn back to you and actually ask you to expand on the imperatives you clearly stated, the business imperatives of responding to some of the real-world challenges. How widespread is the appetite for businesses to do this? And in your view, how and why should businesses build responsible behavior, responsible imperatives into their strategies? Thank you. I think that we have seen a dramatic change over the last five to ten years from corporation to see that they are managing all stakeholders, stakeholder capitalism. And that's really to see that you actually are having shareholders, your customers, your employees, but also society doing responsible business. And that hangs together in order to have a successful company. I think that many, many corporations feel like that. And if you are a technology company, it's very obvious that you should be part of this when it comes, for example, in our case, broadband STEM education is very, very important for our future. And that's also where we put our responsibility of business. Verizon will between 2020 and 2025 invest $3 billion in education in schools in the United States, where we have our majority of our business when it comes not only having broadband access, but also the device and the application and the education for the teachers in order to see that this is not just philanthropy. For us, this is a business part of our business strategy. And that's how I see the technology company, but any type of company should see that what are their contribution to the society and how does it hang together with your overall strategy. So the only thing I say, it has to be part of the strategy. It cannot be philanthropy, even though I love philanthropy, but if you're going to have it in a private company, it has to be part of the strategy that you serve all the stakeholders. And that's how we do it here with technology. So Hans, is there a case for industry led or an industry government led or maybe a multi stakeholder arrangement that catalyzes and incentivizes adoption of these principles in businesses? Do you think it is still too ad hoc and still too personal? I don't think so. It's much more structured like that. And that's how the Edison Alliance has came together. Even though I'm coming from the private sector, I've spent a long time with the SDGs, with the UN, I'm in the board of the UN Foundation. I go in between these two different types of words and I try to get them together because ultimately it's not one company, not one government, one unit that can solve the problem with digital inclusion. We have to do it together. And that's what it's all about in this Edison Alliance, to see that we bring all the best practices together. And I just want to finish by saying what Minis Ringeberg and what Sunil said. There's important thinking about the three pieces to make this happen. Accessibility to technology, affordability, and then the applications because you need all three of them. And that is not one company, nor one government. You have to do it crossover. Thank you, Hans. Mr. Mittal, let me turn to you and let me actually ask you two questions. In your assessment, what has been the impact of the pandemic on the relationship of your consumers and generally the larger society with technology? How has that changed? And what are in some ways the imperatives for cooperation, therefore, in the technology domain? What are the kind of governance innovations that are required to cater to this new relationship that users have with their devices or broadband connectivity? So maybe if you can shed some light on that, the lessons from the last few years for you. I hope you can hear me. Interestingly, the consumers had stopped thinking about broadband providers or the mobile operators. It was really their main attachment to the device that they had or the destination they were visiting, whether it was the Facebook or Instagram or a particular site they were looking at. Broadband connectivity or mobile providers were seen just as they passed through entity. However, during this pandemic, I must say, there was a significant appreciation of the so-called pipe, that there is something out there which connects us to the most important parts of our daily lives. And that is telecom networks and broadband networks. People were able to manage their healthcare very efficiently through various sites that the government had populated. The entire vaccine arrangements and the vaccine passports or the vaccine control or the, in fact, the contact tracing, all was enabled through technology and broadband connectivity. And people suddenly started to realize the power and benefit of both these things coming together. Financial services during this two years of near lockdown, people were able to conduct their businesses, small and medium enterprises, daily breadwinners, could transfer money back to their homes and villages. All this came alive and the absence of physical infrastructure like bank branches are going to an ATM. All this was enabled by the mobile and digital networks. Food delivery at home, so the other very important aspect was people had to kept on getting their food in timely manner and efficient manner. So I think the power of digital connectivity and the digital players really accelerated in the last two years. And I, importantly, even the government and the regulator suddenly woke up that it's easy to go and win elections by committing for subsidized foods, free electricity and water to every home. And in cases like India and some of the other developed countries, gas stove and gas cooking at home. And all these things suddenly brought also government as a stakeholder to say, perhaps an affordable, high quality broadband connectivity to each and every citizen is important too. Yet there is one big element missing and that is funding for very large spread of infrastructure that needs to come through. How do we on a global basis bring all the stakeholders together in which regulators and governments have a big role to play? But also the OTT players who benefit from the connectivity, the broadband players who spend hundreds of billions of dollars to get some share of their gains that they get out of our digital connectivity. Recently the European operators, very large number of them came together to put out a letter to say the OTT players, the digital players need to start to partake some of the responsibility to roll out new age, digital, high quality, high speed broadband networks. So this truly requires a universal approach. This can't be left just on the shoulders of mobile and broadband players. Then they keep on investing, looking at three or four percent IRR each year. And everybody else in the ecosystem transfers the value on one side and government keeps on taking a lot of money out of auctions or out of taxes on the mobile industry only. So there needs to be a new order. So there's a question from the audience already and I want to bring that in because there's another important set of stakeholders and people are worried about. Of course, we talk about the workforce displacement and what industry jobs. But besides the future of work itself and the future of jobs, there is also the SMEs and there is a chance to reinvigorate the SMEs sectors and make them part of the new story. But there is also a fear that you will subsume them. The big players will in some ways cannibalize their presence. How do we engage and protect and rather strengthen these two aspects of our fourth industrial revolution life? Well, I think it's a very important question and any society, any industry, any country cannot survive with a very robust distributed supply chain, especially when the world is again rewriting the supply chain, moving large parts out of China. It is flowing into a very equitable basis in every society. I mean, without, look at our, you know, electronic industry, for example, manufacturing industry. Lot of small industries are coming up, supplying components to the big players. Automobile is a classic example where India has mushroomed a variety of small, medium enterprises which are fueling their supplies into the larger players. So in my own, same with food, same with the Kirana shops in India, the mom and pop shops. What we need to do is, what Hans mentioned, make it a business case to accelerate their digital adoption. I think that is where many of us are already working to ensure millions of SMEs by my company, for example, so that they have the right tools. They're on the cloud. They have, you know, training so that they can participate in the digital new wave of ecosystem. And I'll talk to you on what do you want in the year 2022, but I'll come back a little later on what could be some types of cooperation that we must focus on. But let me turn to Minister Inga Birre. Madam Minister, in your assessment, what is the role of policy and governments in ensuring technology is addressing these common concerns, the global issues we just spoke about. And more importantly, as an audience question asks, how can we cooperate to enable leapfrogging rather than just getting up by those who had been left behind in the previous technology waves? So is there a moment to do more than just catch up and to actually help new nations and new communities take leadership? Thank you, Samir. And maybe before I come back to those two great set of questions, I don't want to leave hands still wondering if we're still part of the same alliance. When I did mention agriculture, it shows how I'm very passionate to have agriculture join the streams of the areas of focus under its own alliance. So just for clarity and maybe mostly for our followers, the three areas that healthcare, education and financial inclusion. So I'm sure agriculture at some point will be a key area of cooperation, given that we have many of our economies that are dependent on this as a source of growth for many of the African countries. But back to your questions, the two questions you asked, Samir. Technology is so central to providing solutions. And when we think about the role of policy and governance, I think in many ways for me, it's the ability to build trust and for people to look at technologies and opportunity, not a threat on the insurance that they could get. And so there's all this conversation around trust and how we can reinforce trust through policy. But I think at the end of the day, the key thing around the role of policy and governance is to provide that openness and transparency. How do we communicate better using policies? How do we provide greater transparency using policies? Because at the end of the day, trust is the oxygen of these emerging and first industrial technologies that we are deploying. On that note, even as we just too tight to the second question, which is really around how do we cooperate to leap forward? And I think Rwanda is a perfect example for that when we worked with both the World Economic Forum in creating performance best regulations around drones. Now, when we were deploying the use case around drones, there wasn't any existence of a global standard around drone regulation. So we could have chosen as a country to really be in the wait and see mode until someone else puts in place some regulations that can be globally embraced and then we decide to deploy some use cases. But what we were focused on was how do we address challenges that were so imminent to us at that point in time? And one of them was around healthcare. It was how we can deliver timely medical products to some of the rural hospitals. And drones seemed like a very good solution to addressing some of this challenge that we had, which was really around timeliness and reducing on the wastage that was happening, especially when you're looking at blood products. So in doing so, I think what we've seen is that the cooperation that we had with forums like the World Economic Forum was the ability to create regulations that were agile enough to adapt to the changing need of the drone technology. And this could apply to any other forced industrial revolution technology, AI automated vehicles, blockchain drones and IoT. But at the same time, I think the challenge we are faced with as policy makers is that the accelerated pace of innovations and digital transformation, we're not able to match that. So when it comes to the pace at which we develop policies and regulations, you can't regulate what you don't know. And so in many times, if you have so many innovations that are happening, the question is, how do you create these agile governance frameworks? How do you create an agile process of building policies and regulations in a way that you don't stifle innovation, but at the same time, you are protecting any unintended consequences or misuse of these technologies. So as we address these challenges and just to close on this point, I think there are common challenges around privacy, data sharing, cybersecurity, and the key thing for us is how we build our policies and regulations in a way that is going to safeguard and build the trust that is needed as we deploy many of these solutions. So I'm going to actually turn to both Hans and Sunil to speak on the trust issue because there is a whole new mood, surveillance capitalism, tech clash, and many other hashtags do the round on social media. But Madam Minister, let me ask you another question. Sitting in Africa, the future belongs to you, one of the fastest growing regions of the world, one of the most best governed countries, Ramanda. How do you see this new moment in globalization, where we are seeing contests emerge? We are seeing the big power contest over control of technology, politics, economic pipelines. How do emerging economies such as Rwanda and many others in the continent respond to this new moment? There is geopolitics coming into everything today, right? The geopolitics of everything. It's something that must be concerning you. Absolutely. Very much. And I think worrying for many of us. But at the same time, I think this is where these holes take hold of capitalism and the talk around cooperation is very essential. There is learning from what the others have done, but there's also understanding what is needed for you. And I want to tie it back to the previous question you asked around leapfrogging. Because with all this contest happening around the world, if you remain in a wait and see mode and you're really trying to see how others are going to figure it out, then most likely leapfrogging will not happen.  Yet at the same time, we have a mass opportunities for developing countries such as ours where you don't have legacy infrastructure. You don't have legacy policies. So that is already an opportunity to leapfrog. And so the idea for us again is how are we leveraging all these collaborations and partnerships? And really looking at some of these globally best that are happening in a lens that is going to support the transition that we are trying to make for our economies. Obviously, as a policymaker, what you're very concerned about is what are the decisions and policies that we're putting in place today? And how do they affect this journey of digitalization of the digital agenda that we're taking forward? And so for countries such as ourselves, one is working together. This is one thing that we've started whether it's from Smart Africa Alliance that has already been put in place that brings together more than 33 countries that are all focused on how do we collectively drive the digital transformation agenda, whether it's the Edison Alliance, which we also subscribe to so looking at all these global platforms where we know we have a shared objective that's African countries starting with even African countries and really understanding how do we work together to make sure what is happening is something that is good for Africa, but is also good for our development. So clearly you're hoping that Africa will be able to benefit from all partnerships rather than being forced to choose sides here and in some ways. And let me now turn to both Hans and Sunil to respond to the trust question, something that Mr. Ingebir had raised in her intervention. How do you build trust? What can we do to rebuild confidence in our consumers, users and society that seem to believe that technology has in some sense been taking them to places they don't want to be in? And how do you navigate this new geopolitical moment where different power groups are competing for shaping the fourth industrial revolution? So Hans, can I turn to you please? Yeah, no, first of all, I think Minister Ingebir has a very good read on what needs to be done agile governance and regulation is going to be important because technology is moving fast. I think one of the most important things of course is transparency for companies that are working in this world because ultimately you're going to be judged by your customers, how you are acting and what you do with their data and how you share it or not share it. I think that's going to be the most important. They're going to come so much new technologies constantly, so regulate technology is going to be hard, but regulate the transparency of corporations is going to be important. And we have actually seen over the last two years and a very important move from our consumers, trying to understand, asking more questions about their data, etc. And we give them more options as well in order to decide over their own data. I think that's going to be very important for companies like ours. And I think we're going to be judged by that ultimately, how transparent we are because ultimately, there are so many people on earth, there are so many different views on what is risk for different people, they need to have a choice to actually choose that because technology is going to be embedded in our society. It's going to be crucial for having a successful and equal world. So we just need to use it, but we need to find the framework for it. So I think that collaboration between what corporations are doing and what governments are doing is absolutely crucial. And I see that start happening right now. And that's the way forward. And how do you navigate the political moment? At the political moment, I think that in general, there are so many different facets of politics when you're running a global cooperation. I think that what we have decided is that we speak up on things that are important for our strategy and our employees and our stakeholders. And that's how we connect it. Even though I personally can have opinions about things happening in the world, we speak up when we think it's important for our stakeholders and how we succeed as a company. Is that diversity in the workplace or it's equal pay and things like that? Then we speak up also politically in order for us to show that we are behind our stakeholders. Thank you. Sunil, over to you. The issue of trust, rebuilding trust or strengthening trust and of course navigating this political moment. You know, technology always is a double-edged sword. You know, it's always been. Historically, every technology unfortunately also brings with it, you know, some negatives. And therefore, it becomes the job of all stakeholders to ensure that as we harvest all the goodness of technology, we minimize, it's probably impossible to eliminate, we minimize the negative stuff that comes out of technology. Customers are right today when one of the most important, you know, sources of the fourth industrial revolution is data. And everything now depends on data across the globe that is free flowing all the time. Can the customer have trust of the entire ecosystem? Be that the operators who connect them or the sites where they land at the destination and the connected financial infrastructure across the globe so that their data is safe, they have the privacy when they conduct their routine or jobs behind the digital framework. And importantly, there is no abuse of the same. This is where I would say all of us, whether it's through World Economic Forum, through Addison Alliance, through United Nations, through our conversation with regulators and of course the platform of ages like GSMA, we try to work as much as possible towards mitigating the stuff. Every company of ours or in the ecosystem put a lot of stuff around cybersecurity, around data protection, importantly also ensuring that the customers are safe, our children are safe in terms of abuse of some of the data and digital negative that can happen. But in the end, I think this is absolutely a large-scale international effort and alliance that is required. This is no different from nuclear disarmament. Just in the lines of where we have ensured for long decades that the nuclear proliferation does not happen around the globe, equally, I think we have to ensure that we have a very strong alliance where we do not allow those actors who are going and compromising customer data, nations data, or I need corrupting the minds of some of our young people across the globe to put out a discourse, which is unfriendly to nations, which is against society, religious issues, intolerance issues, all these things need to be controlled. It's a big task. We have unleashed a huge tiger out there with the technologies that have come out. It's very easy to go and put up a site today and start to disseminate whatever you want. Governments are aware, regulators are aware. I think our politicians are aware that we need to continuously arm ourselves up to ensure that the world and society are not just safe. One of the areas where each one of us are working is putting a lot of investment in the area of cybersecurity. If you see the last four or five years, there are now so many cybersecurity companies, specialists in each area, supporting the digital ecosystem and revolution to mitigate and eliminate as much as possible the risk of digital connectivity. I have to intervene because we are running out of time. It is very difficult to capture a very rich set of interventions from all of you, but I take away three ideas that I think are central. One is about ministering Abiray clearly outlined as being agile governance, agile regulatory frameworks, principle-based and outcome-based and in many ways serving society and progress of people. The second idea that I take back is what Mr. Mitchell suggested. We need a new watchist to ensure that we are able to serve the last human being on the planet. Technology is available to all and how do we create that financial architecture in the future is going to be extremely important. And finally, something that Hans mentioned has remained with me, that we need to create a multi-stakeholder and a multi-layered engagement framework that actually builds sustainable responsibility into business models because you're actually serving your bottom lines as well as society when you do that. Now with that, let me turn it over to Jeremy Jurgen, the managing director at the World Economic Forum for his closing comments. Jeremy. Great. Thank you for the excellent wrap up there, Samir. It's an excellent session today, so I'd like to thank yourself as well as all the other panelists here. I'd also like to reiterate my thanks for the support and efforts throughout the year that we've had from Hans, Sunil and ministering Abiray on our collective work. This includes both the Edison Alliance where we're actively working with the number of companies, national governments, NGOs to address the challenges of access and make sure that this is done in a way that's equitable and that everyone can benefit from the Fourth Industrial Revolution. I'd also like to highlight the work that we've done, the ministering Abiray referenced in RONDA, where we've worked not only on drone delivery systems for healthcare, but also looking at how we can use new advances in artificial intelligence to facilitate care in the country and we're exploring new domains. These are all extremely important efforts and we wouldn't be able to do it without the collective support of our partners and governments around the world in each of these areas. I'd also like for the audience who's joined us today, I'd invite you to visit our website. You can go more in depth on each of these initiatives that we've discussed today. You can also learn about the work that we're doing around cybersecurity, trust and digital security. Sunil referred to this in his remarks. We have a very strong program on digital safety and what we're doing there to promote safe access to the internet for all ages and all groups and how we need collective efforts from all parties to contribute to that. Each of these efforts will be very important to ensure that we can fully benefit from the Fourth Industrial Revolution. On that note, I'd like to thank everyone for your contributions today. Look forward to our next discussion and to continuing our work throughout the year ahead. Thank you.


This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on culturally responsive services with persons who are LGBTQ2IK. And we're not going to cover everything. And, you know, I'm going to put out there at the beginning the caveat that a lot of the literature that has been written is still only written or was written for LGBT. So the other sexual orientations that have been added to that aren't included and aren't spoken of as much. So I've done my best to kind of generalize and get you as much information as I could find that could be useful.  You don't know how acculturated they are to the mainstream culture, how bicultural they are, et cetera. So we want to make sure to definitely check in with people before we assume that anything that we're going to talk about today really applies to them. So we're going to start out by learning terminology specific to the LGBTQ2IK community. Explore specific verbal and nonverbal communication issues. And let me say the beginning part of the terminology. I'm going to go through really quickly because you can review it on your own if you need a refresher on some of that terminology, but I want to get down to some of the nitty-gritty stuff. We're going to learn about the stages of the coming out process and review the Nissan's three-phase model for recovery from shame. And we're also going to talk about the cultural or the counselor's tasks at each particular phase. We'll talk about some LGBTQ2IK cultural issues and how race, culture, and ethnicity impact identity and development and acculturation. We'll identify specific treatment issues which may be unique to this population. And finally, we're going to learn about the Family Acceptance Project, which is an advocacy project that has been started to help families that are dealing with a child who is coming out and helping them figure out how to support that child. So terms, sex is basically just the genetic anatomical characteristics that people are born with.  Not all of these people identify as intersex. Sexual orientation is the person's emotional, sexual, and or relational attraction to others, including heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, intersex. Gender identity is our internal sense of being male or female. Because gender identity is internal, it's not necessarily visible to others. So sex is the external stuff, kind of what we're born with. Gender identity is more of a psychological concept, and so it's not necessarily visible.  Gender identity in many cases is independent of sexual orientation. So you don't want to assume anything. A transgender person transitions to express gender identity through various changes, including wearing clothes and adopting a physical appearance that aligns with their internal sense of gender. So this is a gradual process. They don't just wake up one morning and suddenly change how they're acting or interacting most.  I'm going to be true to myself. But for other people is a gradual process. Gender expression is the manner in which people represent their gender to others through mannerisms, clothes, and personal interests. Now, the two in LGBTQI2K represents two-spirit, an inclusive term created specifically by and for Native American communities. It refers to an American Indian or Alaskan Native American people who express their gender sexual orientation and or gender sexuals in indigenous non-Western ways using tribal terms and concepts and or define themselves as LGBTQI in a Native context. So two-spirit, if you're working with somebody who is Native American or Alaskan Native might be a term that comes up. Heterosexism resembles racism or sexism and denies, ignores, denigrates, or stigmatizes non-heterosexual forms of emotional and affectional expression, sexual behavior, or community. Homophobia is defined as the irrational fear or aversion to or discrimination against LGBT behaviors or persons. Now, internalized homophobia is something we're going to talk about a little later and it describes the self-loathing or resistance to accepting LGBT sexual orientation. And it's an important concept in understanding LGBT clients because we're working with people who are in a society that sometimes says, you know what, you really shouldn't be here or you shouldn't be this way. So figuring out what they think. And so sometimes they internalize those negative messages and develop internalized homophobia and self-loathing. Lesbians are people who identify as female and are attracted to others who identify as female.   Bisexuals are attracted to both males and females. Transgenders are born a certain sex but identifies a different gender. Queer is actually a very inclusive term for anyone in the LGBT plus community. Choosing to identify as queer can mean individuals don't have to belong to a more specific category if they're not sure yet of their sexuality or gender or just simply don't want that label.  Asexual and that's actually not even recognized in the acronym right now. When a person is asexual it simply means they aren't very sexually attracted to either sex and generally have a low level of interest and desire to take part in sexual activities. It doesn't mean that it's a pathology and that's one thing that they get a lot of times when they go into counseling and they start talking about relationships or whatever is they feel different because they don't have the sexual urges that some of their their peers do pansexual when someone is pansexual it means they're attracted to people regardless of their gender. They're attracted to people rather than one particular gender or sexuality. Polygamous or polyamorous are people who identify as having consenting open relationships with more than one person at a time and kink is about people who have kinky fantasies and this could involve BDSM which stands for bondage discipline dominance and submission and sadomasochism and some of the things that you may run into clients who have the kink affiliation female lead relationships Dom sub relationships straight up BDSM. So being aware of what's out there and what's within the range of normal and you know none of us really like that term normal because who are we to say what is okay. But being open to those sorts of concepts so moving on to the nitty gritty LGBT individuals have a creative vocabulary on the subject of sexual orientation and they may often use code words for safety reasons and you know you can kind of think about this they may say are you part of the community when you work with people with substance abuse issues especially alcoholism for example. And they meet somebody else they may say are you a friend of Bill and that means are you an alcoholics anonymous so it's a code word so you don't have to out yourself to everybody to find out if it's safe to talk about particular topics or whatever some LGBT individuals disapprove of words used to describe them so please ask there's a variety of terms and not everybody's comfortable with every term out there so just ask it's not offensive it's actually shows that you're interested in your trying to be empathetic and supportive.   It is important however when you're talking to a transgender person and this is generally a lot closer to universal to call the person by his or her preferred name go figure and always use the gender designation that is chosen by the client so if the client is identifying as male you want to use the male pronouns LGBT individuals rely tremendously on nonverbal cues to establish whether the situation is safe for them to be themselves so we want to make our offices and our environments. Full of evidence that they're safe and they can be accepted and welcomed in our in our clinics a rainbow colored flag is a good thing to have around and you can have a little rainbow colored flag in the pencil holder of your desk you don't have to you know go to great. What's the word I'm looking for interior design steps small things let people know it's safe a straight but not narrow bumper sticker on a car and in the parking lot. That can be a hint a mission statement that includes a commitment to honoring diversity or a commitment to treating LGBT clients have it out there have it written out there that you're you have a commitment to providing a safe welcoming and nurturing environment.  The community is relatively small now that's not true everywhere some places the community is huge but a lot of times people who are gay lesbian transgender are going to the same social places going to the same bars going to the same restaurants and stuff so they may get to know each other and they see somebody they know they may feel a little bit more comfortable it's not like you can just identify somebody who's gay or lesbian but if somebody's there and they know each other. Materials used in treatment need to acknowledge the LGBT experience so we want to figure out more providing case scenarios when we're providing examples when we have when we're choosing literature and stuff to be out in the lobby we want to make sure that the LGBT person is represented we want to make sure that their concerns are represented in contrast to how members of ethnic cultures are marginalized LGBT individuals may receive disapproval and censure from those whom they most trust and rely on their parents relatives religious leaders teachers and friends to think about that you know that was one that kind of stuck with me for a while because it hadn't occurred to me that I mean the fact that sometimes coming out results in a lot of family disruption and chaos I knew that. But I hadn't really thought about the fact that you know for other ethnic minorities they can go back to their culture of origin they can go back to their family they can there's a place they can go where they can feel safe but for a lot of LGBT individuals the place that they're supposed to feel safe is no longer safe. Most members of ethnic minorities can escape discrimination by returning to a supportive family or neighborhood. Additionally when they're growing up positive role models are not as easy to identify now with a lot of these new television shows there are a lot more role models there are a lot more people that are openly gay transgender that can serve as role models for people so that's good I mean we're making progress we're not there yet but we are making progress. The LGBT culture is also one that is not developed taught or transmitted by families so if somebody you know figures out that they're of a minority sexual orientation then they've got to figure out what do I do with this you know generally you're raised in a family where girls are expected to marry off and become wives and men are expected to marry off and become husbands and this is how it goes and yada yada well that's not the case here and so figuring out exactly what they're supposed to do and where they're supposed to go and becomes a question and we're going to talk even more about that later when we talk about the fact that there's not even a consensus on the correct way if you will to be gay the correct way to embody this culture or exactly what this culture is so it's still sort of influx a little bit part of gay culture for some people is the celebration of being gay not everybody chooses to come out of the closet not everybody chooses to embrace their sexual orientation that doesn't necessarily mean that they are I mean obviously they are still gay so we want to recognize that everybody's level of comfort with celebration of being gay is going to be very different because public acceptance is important many LGBT persons want to advance the message that LGBT individuals are no different from non LGBT persons you know they have marriages they have children they're successful in business they you know it's a very fulfilling life but there's another camp of persons that are worried that highlighting the similarities and positive aspects of gay culture could mean the loss of the culture as the LGBT community and just being kind of sucked into mainstream culture and they have a lot of pride you know this second camp really likes their individuation as a unique culture and then some believe that the gay community should try to transform mainstream society rather than to join it so there are different ways about how do we advocate how do we handle the LGBT culture in terms of integrating or interacting with other cultures the other aspect of the debate involves differences about whether there's only one way to be gay which may lead to not honoring LGBT persons with other lifestyles or opposing views bisexuals for example experience that oftentimes lesbians and gay men do not accept bisexuality as a legitimate sexual orientation but regarded as a developmental phase on the way to acceptance of a lesbian or gay identity again this is changing some to but it's important to recognize that there are still you know just like in any culture there are still some people that are much more traditional and there are more people that are more progressive cultural factors don't impede sexual identity formation sexual identity formation is a developmental process we all go through cultural factors do delay or negatively impact identity integration involving internal and external acceptance and comfort of being with being known as LGBT so it's important to understand that the sexual identity is going to form now the race culture and ethnicity can impact whether the person's okay with that or they internalize the homophobia and develop a strong self-hatred and have negative mental health outcomes. There's positive engagement in LGBT social activities if the culture is not okay with that then people are not going to reach out and engage in positive activities and develop a link with that community which as we just said LGBT culture is not transmitted through family so the only way to develop their identity as an LGBT person and figure out what it means is to be involved with the culture so if they're not out there doing it they're going to have they're going to be struggling a little bit they know who they are they know what their preferences are but trying to figure out how to fit into that community is going to be more of a challenge. Cultural factors affect internalized anxiety and avoidance as they relate to the LGBT QI to S's individual experience with attachment figures. For example secure attachment during the coming out process enhances coping with anti-gay prejudice self-acceptance and self-esteem which makes sense if the person believes they can go and tell mom or dad that guess what you know I'm gay I'm lesbian I'm transgender and they feel like they can do that without losing parental love and it goes as well as can be expected then there's a much better outcome and the person will not internalize as much self-loathing if they're like okay mom and dad can handle that that's cool. In addition to understanding a client's ethnic background counselor should keep in mind how the client's culture views LGBT individuals and the effect this viewpoint has on the client. Each ethnic minority group has norms and values about LGBT members and behavior. For example LGBT persons of color may cope with trying to fit into the gay and lesbian communities in the face of racism and discrimination. So not only do they face racism and discrimination in the community at large but they also face racism and discrimination within the LGBT communities. For some the added burden of these issues makes finding a comfortable place in society even more complex and difficult. In certain collectivistic cultures cohesiveness of the group is an important value and because of this shame is a frequently used social constraint to control or deter expressions of homosexual behavior. So think back to the culturally responsive webinars we already did when we're talking about persons persons who are Asian persons who are Hispanic persons who are African American. There's a large portion of people out there who have come from a collectivistic culture that is you know that could influence how much or how well or how easily they embrace their sexual identity homophobia in the African American community is often more intense than in the dominant community. So it's important to recognize many LGBT African Americans say that they do not feel welcome or comfortable in predominantly Caucasian LGBT settings. So they face discrimination in Caucasian settings but there's a lot of homophobia in the African American community.  So this is important to remember when working with Hispanic clients because Hispanic culture being very collectivistic and there's a lot of issue with machismo and males being the center of the family. There's a lot of difficulty for men in the Hispanic culture to acknowledge that they may be gay bisexual or transgender. So what do we do let's enhance assets early and continuous attachment positively shapes relationship development in later years among all children adolescents and adults and internal locus of control is going to facilitate self-efficacy. So if we can help children grow along the way if we can help parents learn how to provide unconditional positive regard then you're going to be able to ensure that they're going to have a better outcome or hopefully have a better outcome protective factors in one setting can compensate for the risks in multiple settings. So if they have a stable home base if they've got a nurturing home base for example that's going to go a long way even if at work and at school and you know with some of their friends the coming out process doesn't go as well if they have a nurturing home base where there's protective factors they are going to be better off studies of resilience for youth who are sexual gender minorities have demonstrated positive social relationships moderate the relationship between stress and distress so no different than the community at large. Affirming faith experiences contribute to less internalized homonegativity more spirituality and psychological health and a lot of people think that the church is against gay people the church is against LGBT QI to K but in reality and these links will take you to it there are a lot of churches that are recognizing the reality of the fact that there are a lot of people out there who are LGBT who are among the sexual minority. The Episcopal Church for example has approved the ordination of transgender people in 2010 150 orthodox rabbis and educators signed a declaration calling for the welcoming of LGBTQ Jews in the orthodox community and those are just two of the headlines but this current perspectives on religion if you click on that it lists a bunch of the religions I'm sure they don't have all of them out there and you can read their basic position on LGBTQ family support and acceptance explains adolescent comfort and resilience in later life so it's so important for the person who identifies as a gender or sexual minority to feel that they have got family support and acceptance. The term coming out refers to the experiences of lesbians and gay men as they work through and accept a stigmatized identity transforming a negative self identity into a positive one. Now there's no correct process or single way to come out and some LGBT persons don't ever come out so when you're working with somebody who identifies as LGBT to I.K. We want to make sure that we recognize how much they're willing and comfortable coming out or how much they're planning on coming out. But regardless we want them to transform their identity into a positive one even if they don't come out you know how can you feel the way you feel and be who you are if you're not going to come out. How can I help you be happy and healthy and all those sorts of things. SOMSA providers introduction to treatment for LGBT individuals provides a lot more information on this topic. We're going to hit the highlights real quick. The CAS model stage one the person experiences identity confusion and it occurs when a person begins to realize that he or she may relate to or identify as being LGBT. This is a process of kind of personalizing identity. So during this time we want to help people explore what does this mean to them and increase awareness of you know what their feelings are what their attitudes are what the communities attitudes are so they know what's going on and they can be they can start exploring what this identity means to them. They may have feelings of anxiety and confusion and that's okay. We want to help them get past that confusion and deal with figure out what their anxiety is about and start dealing with that. Some of the defenses in this stage may be denial. They may say you know what no that's just it was just a phase it's I'm not really lesbian or gay or whatever the case may be. So during this period it's really important for somebody to have a confidential support person that they can lean on when they're trying to figure out what's going on and they have those anxieties coming up somebody that they can talk to. During stage two is identity comparison. The person accepts the possibility that he or she might be LGBT. So during this time we want to explore the implications and encourage people to encounter others like themselves. Now they may not be ready to do that and that's okay. They're going to take the lead in this. There can be feelings of anxiety at this point still but there also can be feelings of excitement like okay I might be able to do this. If somebody's having difficulty in this stage and there are times that they may they may start bargaining or rationalizing and going you know if it turns out you know please just let this be a phase you know if this happens then I'll do whatever or they could rationalize like I said they may rationalize and think it's a phase during the recovery stage of this phase. We want to help people start meeting other similar gay lesbian bisexual transgender persons if they're comfortable with that if not one of the things that you might do is encourage them to find role models online or on in the media so they can start exploring what it means to be LGBT. Stage three is identity tolerance and occurs when a person comes to accept the probability that he or she is an LGBT person. They want to or they need to start recognizing their social and emotional needs as an LGBT person what does that mean what do I need from my family from my community for myself. They may have some feelings of anger at this point I didn't want to be this way I didn't want this to happen but they also again may still have feelings of excitement. During this phase we can help people try to figure out what it means to them to be gay.  Identity acceptance occurs when a person fully accepts rather than tolerates himself or herself as an LGBT person. So we want the person to start developing community and integrating with others now they may not be out to all of their peers yet and may never be but at least they have a community and they are starting to associate with other LGBT persons. They may have some feelings of rage and sadness it's not fair that I have to be two different people or it's not fair that you know I'm this way whatever the case may be they may have hostility towards straight culture for the way that they feel like they're treated so it's important to figure out what may be prompting that hostility where do they feel oppression where do they feel that they're being denigrated where they do they feel lack of acceptance from and those can all become therapeutic issues. They want to continue at this point we want to encourage them to continue community building. Stage five is identity pride and the person at this point immerses himself or herself in the LGBT community and culture to live out their identity as totally as they can for them. During this point we want them to have the full experience of being an LGBT person and confront internalized homophobia not everybody comes to this stage not everybody is wanting or willing to be out there and fully experience what this means. And that's a choice that's a very acceptable choice if they don't want to come completely out. If you working with somebody that you know chooses to embrace the lifestyle they may have feelings of excitement and some focused anger at people institutions here and there at this point there's an arrogant pride and rejection of straight culture as the norm you know they are proud. We want to help people integrate their sexuality identity and recovery so if they came to us because they were dealing with anxiety and depression and self-esteem issues and everything we want to help them integrate everything into this one beautiful well package and finally identity synthesis occurs when a person develops a fully internalized and integrated LGBT identity and experiences himself or herself as whole when interacting with everyone across all environments. So during this period the person continues coming out as fully as possible they may begin intimate gay or lesbian relationships. And self-actualization begins who am I really how can I be my best self so we started that in the last phase and we're really working towards it now gangbusters. The person is excited and happy they're not defensive they are this is who I am and I love myself and this is awesome. So for us at this point we're terminating you know the person is happy they don't need to be in counseling anymore we want to encourage them to be happy and you know if they come upon discrimination or oppression or whatever it is they have the tools to deal with that but at that point if it becomes problematic they can come back to counseling but you know they've moved through the process and they are rocking and rolling. Unfortunately as this process goes there's a parallel process and it's a recovery from shame because our straight community the majority community still tends to stigmatize and oppress those of sexual minorities. So the first phase in the nieces three phase model is breaking the silence it's important for the LGBT individual to tell their story and address the pain of being different in a heterosexist society so encouraging them to look at what is it what is heterosexist mean to them and what does it mean to be different we can facilitate their discussion of hiding their LGBT feelings from others we can explore the emotional costs of hiding or denying their sexuality does that mean we're encouraging them to not do it not necessarily we want to let the client take the lead about what they think is safe because there's costs and benefits to everything decisional balance exercises are great here to discuss how the client has tried to fit in and at what cost because there's a lot of stress associated with trying to pass as heterosexual so we want to talk about that examine negative feelings of self-blame feeling bad or sick and the effect of shaming messages on the client and again I am so thrilled to see so much more openness in the media at least to people who are sexually different is awesome and fostering a client's ability to be out so during this first phase we're wanting to help them figure out what does it mean to be out and what do I need in order to come out phase 2 allows clients to understand their struggle in the context of societal discrimination and prejudice so as clinicians we can facilitate focusing and managing anger constructively not destructively remember in the coming out process there was there were several stages where anger was a predominant emotion so how could you use this anger remember anger represents a feeling of threat you feel threatened you feel oppressed for some reason where's that coming from and how can you use that energy just being angry isn't going to fix anything so how can you use that energy to improve the next moment to improve society to improve your environment we want to help the client understand and accept negative self-image as sociocultural and not personal so we're starting to address that internalized homophobia and counteract clients experience of heterosexism and homophobia by role modeling and providing a treatment environment that's empowering for LGBT persons not stigmatizing look around at what messages you have out there and whether it's accepting and and productive or destructive phase 3 is when they reclaim personal power it involves improving self-concept self-esteem and self-concept you remember the last phase of the coming out process with self-actualization so we're kind of paralleling still we can help the client facilitate their own self-efficacy and self-concept you know who are you you know let's define who you really are when you you've stopped you know trying to fit in and trying to be what you think everybody wants you to be who are you identify and change negative messages to affirmations you know if they get a message that it's not okay to love somebody of the same gender how do you change that to an affirmation I deserve love and I deserve to love recognize and release residual shame develop a positive affirming spirituality and remember spirituality is that connectedness that sense of being part of something and interconnected to the world is not necessarily religion integrate well before I move on it is important for a lot of people not everybody at this point to find a church home find a home within their religion that is accepting of them if they were raised you know Buddhist or if they were raised Christian or or Jewish or whatever it is very helpful to encourage them to find a welcoming environment not all churches you know even if the person goes to an Episcopalian church for example not all Episcopalian churches are going to be welcoming as others so testing out different churches in different communities to figure out where there's a good home can be helpful if spirituality and especially religion is important in their lives encourage them to integrate their public and private identities so they're not you know trying to live two lives because that's exhausting and build a support network connecting to the LGBT community but also to persons in the straight community who are supportive other treatment issues one third of suicide first attempts of LGBT youth occurred within the same year of self-identification as gay or bisexual so if you work with adolescents this is an important factor one third of suicide first attempts occur within a year of self-identification so there's a lot of chaos and conflict going on within that person's mind counselors need an understanding of the dynamics of LGBT interpersonal relationships including the internal and external problems of same-sex couples so you know same-sex marriage is allowed in certain states not allowed in other states recognized by some providers not recognized by other providers when we're thinking insurance and other things so there are a lot of unique stressors within relationships that are unique to the LGBT relationships and we want to make sure that we understand the broad diversity and variety of relationships in the community on top of that although many individuals have a life partner others are single or in nontraditional relationships outside the cultural norm of the heterosexual monogamous legally sanctioned marriage so and this is another thing that I've seen growing over the years over the past decade the people that are in non monogamous relationships or non legally sanctioned marriages has gone up quite a bit so being aware of the different options out there and exploring any of your personal biases as it relates to you know whether marriage is supposed to be through a man and a woman monogamous and all those things what does that mean to you as a clinician many LGBT individuals are parents and have children from heterosexual marriages adopted children or children through other means such as in vitro fertilization parenting issues and helping children deal with oppression because they're being raised by gay parents may also be very salient issues for these parents growing up in a society that says they should not exist LGBT clients may have internalized homophobia we can help them start looking at what kind of negative messages do you tell yourself if their parents and their raising children what kind of messages do you tell yourself about your children sexuality you know maybe because of your internalized homophobia you're saying you know they can't grow up to be gay or bisexual or whatever it is and that may or may not be true but we want to make sure that people are kind of looking at that and how society's messages impact them and impact everything they do LGBT people may be victims of anti-gay violence and hate crimes so trauma counseling may be appropriate LGBT persons experience stressors not only related to coming out but also is passing as heterosexual so if they haven't come out fully to everybody you know they may at their work environment for example feel they need to pass where in their private life they can embrace their not heterosexual identity HIV and AIDS continues to be a major factor in gay male life and it's also a factor in transgender life to a certain extent because trans what's the word I'm looking for testosterone has to be injected and if people are relying on black market hormones they also may be relying on or getting needles from not such scrupulous places so being aware that HIV and AIDS and blood-borne pathogens continue to be a major factor being a feminine is sometimes condemned in the gay community and this characteristic may add to a gay men's shame just knowing that so you don't assume that being a feminine is okay and that's not an issue at all just know that it could be bisexuals may feel alienated not just from the heterosexual community but also from lesbian and gay community so they internalize biphobia which results in a struggle towards self-acceptance for transgendered persons hormone therapy is often an overlooked issue hormone therapies now think about it if you've ever known anybody on hormone therapy whether they're taking testosterone injections or they're taking steroids or they're taking you know female hormones it affects mood and if it's taken improperly it can really dramatically affect mood and sometimes you know the prescription stuff can improve mood but it's important to understand that especially if they are on a hormone replacement or therapy for transgendered persons there's a lot of chaos going on in their body so they may have mood swings that they need to learn how to deal with transgender clients may face additional risks from using street or black market hormones and because testosterone must be injected obtaining or using needles may be relapsed triggers for clients in early recovery from IV drug use so if they were addicted to opiates or something that they were injecting it can be a relapse trigger LGBT individuals have been marginalized by some health professionals who historically labeled LGBT sexual orientation as deviant or pathological so a lot of times LGBT individuals may not disclose their sexual orientation to healthcare providers and especially unfortunately not mental health clinicians or psychologists because the big old DSM was pathologizing them for so long so this family acceptance project I told you there was an advocacy project that was working to help people who have children who begin to explore their identity as a sexual or gender minority the family acceptance project has identified a clear link between families rejecting reactions to sexual orientation and gender expression during adolescence and negative health and mental health outcomes kind of predictable there but not a surprise family acceptance project recognizes that parents and caregivers who are seen as rejecting their LGBT child are often motivated by care and concern to help their child fit in or have a good life and be accepted by others they want their child to be okay they want their child to be quote normal and they have difficulty understanding that their child can be LGBT QI2K and be normal understands that family behaviors are not isolated incidents but occur in a cultural context so it's not just one time mom says that you just can't be telling me that it's repeated messages that they get from mom and dad as they're growing up and even after they've come out aimed at socializing their children and adolescents to adapt and be successful in a heteronormative society these behaviors aim to protect their children from harm and victimization due to their LGBT identity and gender expression so a lot of times the things that we do inadvertently may be oppressive to our children if we don't recognize that they have a different sexual identity the family acceptance project uses research findings to link reactions to their child's identity with health mental health and well-being so we want to show them research says that if you have this reaction it's going to promote well-being so let's work for this reaction beyond building a strong alliance between families and providers family awareness of the consequences of negative behavioral reactions is the most important mechanism of change it helps parents understand that what they do and how they react and how they continue to react will continue to have an impact so yeah the initial reaction may not have been great but it's not too late they can back up they can you know begin accepting and supporting that person once they kind of catch their breath for a second parents and families often experience their lack of knowledge about LGBT issues as inadequacy that feels disempowering and shameful so think about when your kid has come to you with a problem you know we're supposed to be parents we're supposed to know how to fix it or know how to do whatever and if they come to you with a problem and we don't know what to do with it then we can feel very out of control and that's not a good feeling especially when you're dealing with your child's well-being so viewing it from that perspective what can I do to help you feel empowered what can I do to help you feel adequate as a parent many families perceive their LGBT identity as a loss particularly a loss of control over their child's future so differentiating loss it's not a loss in the I didn't have the child that I wanted it can be the loss of oh my gosh I cannot protect my child and I cannot you know help him avoid stigmatization provider should help families validate and address these feelings by affirming the importance of family support to build their child's self-esteem promote well-being and buffer rejection and negative reactions from others the family acceptance project recognizes that when rejecting and accepting behaviors coexist if they get rejecting in public and accepting at home or some things are rejected and other things are accepted or sometimes parents will accept their children but then they see something that is between a gay couple on TV and they make a negative comment or nonverbal it's confusing to the child so we want to help parents and families recognize that there is ambivalence there can be ambivalence but when there is ambivalence there's decreased support and increased risk for the child because the child's going okay so how do you really feel do you support me or was this reaction more actual to how you really feel inside education and learning their reactions and the effect of it that it has on their LGBT children can improve communication and help parents and caregivers respond in ways that help their LGBT child feel supported and loved rather than misunderstood or rejected you can read more about the project with this link so when you're working with LGBT clients and families there are some guidelines to kind of remember you want to demonstrate support and understanding for the client their spouse life partners and significant others there's no universal terminology regarding significant others in the LGBT community so ask again sometimes it comes down to asking what would you like me to call your partner your partner your your spouse your husband what term do you want me to use acknowledge the individual's self identification they self identify as bisexual or intersex or asexual this is what we're going to acknowledge and validate we need to be aware of biases that we don't we personally have regarding what a family should be like what does family mean does it mean you know two kids a dog and a white picket fence or does it mean an interaction where two people who love each other are coexisting or something else so what does a family mean understand the diversity and variety of relationships in the LGBT community and you could do an entire presentation on that and so it's important to recognize the different things and the spectrum of normal the spectrum of behaviors that goes on out there you would be surprised at how much BDSM and kink and things are out there and embraced by nearly a majority you know the numbers are getting much much higher especially since 50 shades of gray came out people have started becoming more open about their kink and about their sexual orientation and you know like I said media has also done a great job at helping people who are gay lesbian and transgender feel like they've got role models and they're accepted don't assume when you're working with these clients that there's no history of opposite sex relationships there probably is and it can be when they're still trying to figure out their identity but it could be that they had opposite sex relationships later on in life too for whatever reasons so we want to talk about those when you're using doing your assessments use culturally sensitive assessment measures avoid labeling your clients meet them where they are in the coming out process and respect their need to feel safe be guided by them listening to what they say is comfortable for them so if they say it's not comfortable to start making friends in the community that's okay what is comfortable for you what would you like to do for your next step what could help you learn more about this issue advocate and create safety for LGBT clients supporting and encouraging positive images of LGBT LGBT so within the media within social media within advertising I know who was it I'm thinking MTV had a very awesome transgender commercial that came out about a year ago I can't remember but it's important to support and encourage positive images develop a diversity preparedness plan for working with the LGBT community and in your course I have I found this checklist that was so awesome that was done by a school system and it's included in the additional resources but they worked on developing a diversity preparedness plan so it's one that you might use as a model for your own practice and work with the community to understand their particular needs and concerns for example I know there are some places in Texas and I'm thinking Austin is one of them where the LGBT community is huge and it's embraced there are drop-in centers there's lots of social activities and then there are other places where the LGBT community really doesn't have much in the way of resources and they have far different needs and concerns so being aware of what's true in your community is really important to your clients. Couple more things when you're taking a family history when you're working with all clients you're going to ask what were the rules of the family system?  Were all family members expected to evolve or behave in a certain way? And what were the family's expectations in regard to careers, relationships, appearance, status, or environment? Those are normal things that you're going to talk about with probably already on your assessment sheet. When you're working with LGBT clients you also may want to ask was anyone else in the family acknowledged to be or suspected of being a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender? Because a lot of messages get communicated and kids even when they're little you know you're getting ready to go to a family reunion and the parents are talking and they hear stuff. They start getting those messages even when they're little about what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, what they think about, Aunt Sally, et cetera. How did the family respond to other individuals coming out or being identified as LGBT individuals? So they may hear about somebody in their church or in their community who's come out. What was their reaction? Is the client out to his or her family? That's obviously something we want to ask. And if the client is out, what type of response did he or she receive? So those are things that can help you get a better idea about what types of images and messages the person got and what the reception was like for them or if they haven't come out yet could indicate some of the reasons for internalized homophobia or fear of coming out. Now the sexual orientation assessment tool I do have time to click on this really quick. Again, this is in the document in the class online but I found it to be a really nice assessment tool. You have to scroll down to page 40. What page are we on? Okay, I thought it was paid page 40. Oh, that's page 72. Here we go. Coleman's assessment tool. It asks people to identify whether current relationship status is and so even in the assessment, you know, you can start putting out ideas and verbiage and hints what I'm can't find a word I'm looking for that being LGBT is okay. So what's your current living relationship? How do you define or how do you identify in terms of sexual orientation? In the future, how do you want to identify yourself? In terms of your comfort with your current sexual orientation, you know, how do you feel? And then it starts talking about up to the present time and in the future. So I was born a biological male or female up to the present time. And then in the future or in the ideal, I wish I had been born. So if they wish they had been born female, they could put that there and you can start looking about at the differences between where they are and how they identify right now and who they are and how they want to identify in the future. So this is free. It is part of your SAMHSA document that's in your classroom. Other resources, PFLAG, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbian and Gays. They have a membership of over 200,000 people. ESHL is dedicated to the work of supporting Orthodox LGBTQ Jewish individuals in their desire to live fully in their religious and cultural traditions. Both of them have websites. There's also the National LGBT Health Education Center. MTV from the UK has an entire Pride section. SAMHSA, a provider's introduction to treatment for LGBT individuals. This one is old but it's the latest one that they have. There's another guide for understanding, supporting and affirming children, youth, and families. And an asset based approach for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, and two-spirit youth and families in systems of care. So figuring out how to enhance assets within the system of care for this particular culture. I know I covered a bunch of stuff. Are there any questions? Alrighty, if there are none, you guys are good to go. Have an awesome weekend and I will see you on Tuesday. Thank you all for coming. If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube. You can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing at allCEUs.com slash Counselor Toolbox. This episode has been brought to you in part by AllCEUs.com providing 24-7 multimedia continuing education and pre-certification training to counselors, therapists, and nurses since 2006.


I'm Zeke and welcome to The Dream Green Show. In this episode, I got about $200 that I'm going to invest into the stock market today. I'm going to give you guys my exact place on what I'm buying this week on what I think is going to explode in the near future. So make sure that you guys stick to the end of this video so you can catch what plays that I'm doing this week that I think is just going to explode just not just gradually go up over in the near future but just explode in the near future. And I'm letting you guys know right now this week. So go ahead and destroy that thumbs up button. It helps out this channel more than you can even imagine. In fact, hold on. Here we go. Here we go. Uncle Nearest. All right. Every time you guys, there we put that right there. Yeah. Yeah. Every time you guys hit that like button, I'm going to go ahead and take a sip. So appreciate. Yes, sir. So keep hitting that like button.  Sign up now by clicking the link down in the description. Deposit $100 and now you can receive three free stocks valued up to $1,600. Who knows, one of those stocks could probably be one of these stocks that I'm about to buy today. So make sure that you sign up now using the link down in the description. But enough talking. Let's go ahead and dive straight into the video. Welcome back dreamers. Here we are on my Ryber Hill portfolio. I'm currently sitting at $33,221.92 on the day I am up $156.23. So almost half a percent. That is the amazing thing about the stock markets that you could make money while you're at work or even on vacation. So today has been a pretty good day. You do have your updates and you do have your down days. But right now in my buying power, I have around $212.98. So let me show you guys what companies I'm about to invest in, give you a little information about each of those companies and then tell you why I think they're going to explode in the future. So let's go ahead and dive into these plays. These plays could probably help you out. If you're more of a risky investor trying to make a quick come up, these are the stocks for you. So let's go ahead and dive into it directly. Okay. Here we are on the first one. The first one is LCA. It's a holding. It's an acquisition company for Golden Nugget online gambling. So Golden Nugget online gambling, the tickle symbol LCA is going to change over to that in the near future. But right now it is that $13.11. Now online gambling could literally blow up in the future due to what's going around all the cases in the world right now. That's why online gambling could probably explode in the future. In fact, if we take a look at DraftKings, here we are DKNG. They started off the year at around $18.17 and they exploded up $43. They're up 331% just from the year alone. So DraftKings is an online gambling site that you usually bet on sports games like NHL, MLB, football, basketball. You're betting on different types of sports of football. You're betting on different types of sport games and over the year they're up 330% on the day they're up 5%. They had a pretty good earnings call and their market cap is at $16.45 billion. Now this is one of the first companies that has to do with gambling, online gambling specifically. That's when public and they're doing pretty good since their lunch. Now if we go back to LCA, this one is going to be the Golden Nugget. The Golden Nugget is a casino. They specialize in gambling, restaurants, and all other types of stuff. But now they're trying to bring that online gambling. They're going public and this is the holding for LCA. Right now I have 31 shares of it. I bought in at $15.28 since it's been up and down since. Right now $13 is a great buying opportunity for me. So I'm going to go in and buy $50 worth of LCA. Which is going to be Golden Nugget when the tickle symbol change. Online gambling is addictive. It's so addictive that they have to have a hotline to stop people from gambling. So something as addictive as that is always going to make money because it is an addiction. So let's go ahead and buy $50 worth of LCA. And swipe up. That's around three shares and there we go. All right. So about 50 shares of LCA. Let's move on to the next company. The next one is ChargePoint. But right now it's Switchback Energy. It's a blank check company acquisition company that ChargePoint is going to eventually take over. Right now the tickle symbol is SBE. Now ChargePoint that specializes in charging cars like electric cars. So they are the gas stations of the future. So Joe Biden says that he wants to add over 100,000 new charge stations in North America in the next couple of years. So that is going to be huge for energy. Not just electric vehicles, but for the things that drives the electric vehicles would be the charging stations. That's like all the cars that came out in the 1940s, 30s, 50s, 60s. You're investing into the oil industry at that time. You're not investing to the cars, but you're investing to oil the things that actually drive the car. So that is what Switchback Energy is, which is going to be ChargePoint. Right now I have nine shares. I'm going to pick up $50 worth of SBE. I'm going to hit buy. And this one, I believe that this one can actually 10X in the next 10 years. This one can multiply by 10 over the next 10 years. So hopefully I'm getting enough shares where I can. So I'm going to review and get $50. This is going to be around 3.5 shares. He'll swipe up. And there it goes. So if it goes anywhere from around $16 to $160 over the next 10 years, that is 10x my money. So I need to load up on this company wise at a great price point. So let's go ahead and move on to my third company. The third company is Workhorse. This company is at $19.02. It is down 7.3%. That is a great buying opportunity for me to get in. It's going to lower my average cost. I have 24 shares, which is worth around $462.81. My average cost is at $20.63. So I'm going to lower my average by picking up 50 shares. Workhorse is a company that is going to specialize in making electric vehicles not for the daily driver, but for commercial use like UPS pickups, USPS pickups, like delivery guys. It could be Domino's delivery pieces, but they're going to specialize in delivery commercial use electric vehicles. And there are in talks of doing a billion dollar deal with the USPS, the United States Postal Service. If that deal goes through, this company is going to shoot through the roof. So let me go ahead and pick up $50 more of this company while I can. So I'm going to hit trade, buy $50, review. That's going to be 2.62 shares. Swipe up. All right. So that's going to bring me to 26.9 shares. Ooh, I want to get that to 27, but I'm going to eventually get it there. So while every time Workhorse take a dip, I'm going to eventually pick up a couple of shares until I eventually get it to a hundred shares of Workhorse. So let's move on to my fourth company. Let me move on to my fourth company. All right. So before I talk about this fourth one alone, as I talk about this fourth company, Innovative Industrial Properties, let's see, I can't really talk about it because it's not YouTube friendly to talk about. But let's just say I am up 91.5% on this company up $90. Only had 1.2 shares. I bought in at $79.89. It is at $152.98 and over the last year, they're up 91.2%. So I got in at a great time and due to voting on all you guys going out there voting on what could be legalized to grow in your estate and what you can't grow in your state, there has been multiple states that pass laws that say you can grow this plant in your estate or you can use this plant in your estate in order to 1970s, 1970s. Well, you guys know what I'm getting there. If you haven't caught on by now, do your own research, but that's what this company specializes in. They specialize on renting out the land that people grow the stuff on or the buildings that the people use to actually grow that certain plant. They use that and they pay out a dividend. This is one of the only companies in that sector that pays out a dividend. They have a 2.7 dividend yield and this company has been doing amazing this year. They're up 91%. So I'm going ahead and pick up 50 more dollars of this company. If you're confused about what they specialize in on what they're doing inside of their facilities that they're renting out to these growers, check the comment section and I'm pretty sure somebody will tell you what they're doing down in the comment section. So let me go ahead and pick up 50 shares of this. Review, that's going to be 0.326 shares and swipe up. And there we go, guys. I bought $50 worth of IIPR. And there we go, dreamers. If you stayed through to the end of this video, I gave you four bangers, four stocks that's could potentially 2X, 3X, 4X, 10X your money in the upcoming months, probably within the next year or so. Some of these stocks were double. Some of these stocks were triple. So pay close attention to these four stocks that I gave you and they could just take off in the near future. I don't really see any of them going bankrupt or doing anything bad in the near future. Hopefully they're around to stick for decades and eons on out. But yeah, if you made it to the end of this video, make sure you hit the thumbs up button. It really helps out this channel more than you can even imagine and also subscribe to the channel so you don't miss out on any future videos. But other than that, I'm Zeke, bringing you to Dream Green Show and I'm out. Peace. Ha ha, I'm out.