Well, hello and welcome everyone to our first session of the day. Why do students embargo their E.T.D.s? We have sharing this information with you is Becky Toms of Utah State University Libraries and Rebecca. Yes, I'm Rebecca Nelson. Okay. And Rebecca Nelson from are you also from Utah State? Yes. Also from Utah State. And Valerie Emerson, I'll be your moderator for this session. Just a quick reminder before we begin. During the presentation portion, please keep your audio and video muted. Please feel free to use the Q&A tab to post questions which will be addressed during the Q&A portion. You can navigate to other sessions by clicking the desired session in the hop and schedule or click the left hand sidebar links. I want to thank you all for joining us and I'll turn it over to our presenters, Becky and Rebecca. And I think we're ready to go. Great. Thanks so much Valerie. So I'm going to make sure that I'm sharing my screen and get the presentation up. So, Becca, if you want to let me know, are you seeing our slides? Yes, there they are. Okay, super. So we'll go ahead and get started. Thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon. As Valerie said, our presentation is why oh why do students embargo their ETDs. And there was a song running through my head when I wrote that title but now I can't remember what it was and I don't sing so we won't go there but again as Valerie said my name is Becky Toms and I am the head of digital initiatives at Utah State University Libraries. And I am Becca Nelson. I'm the institutional repository coordinator at USU Libraries. So to give you a little bit of background on our institution here at Utah State University. Oh, do you want to go back, Becky? Oh, sorry. I was trying to turn off my microphone. There we go. All right. So we have around 3044 students in our graduate enrollment and then about 1536 of those are here at our main campus in Logan and 828 are at our statewide campuses and we're not sure how many exactly but there are a number of online students as well. So every semester that turns into about 120 graduate students that are completing their degree. And so we'll jump into embargoes here at USU. We have our feces and dissertations open in our repository unless they choose the option to embargo. So that is a five year option that you can't choose more. They can't choose less unless they email every five years to extend that or email to take that down early. But when they first choose the option, they only can have it for five years. And then it has to go through an approval process. So the library approves it, their advisor, their department head and also the vice provost of graduate studies all have to sign off before a student can receive an embargo. And we in the library are just managing that process. We're not really the ones in charge of deciding that. And you can see here we have embargoes over the last five years, every semester so you can see in the graph the amount that we've had has gone up and down over the years. But we try not to encourage our students to embargo since there usually isn't a reason that they would need to. We really value open access at our university where land grant institutions so we believe in making things as open as possible and making our research available to the public as well as other researchers. So it just makes it more accessible when we have our thesis and dissertations open in our repository. But we wanted to know more about why our students were choosing this option to embargo. And in the past few years, we've made an effort to communicate more with our students and their advisors about the embargoes. So this graph here shows them over time, the trend over time. So you can see that in the spring which is that blue line that it has mainly stayed consistent. And then it is usually higher than the other semesters we usually have more graduating in the spring. But the summer semester has kind of been more unpredictable. That red line is kind of all over the place. But in the fall, it's again stayed roughly the same and that is a little bit lower than in the spring. So we have just a few reasons that our students can choose to embargo their work. So the first is that they can file a patent or they have research that was supported by a grant or a contract. And that group that sponsored their work has to review it before it's made openly available. So they can also indicate the publisher considers their work to be prior publication. That's not usually necessary since most publishers don't have a problem with considering work that's been previously published and made available through a thesis or a dissertation. We'd had future publication as an option until 2019. We decided to remove it since it's not really a barrier to students publishing again because most publishers don't have a problem with it. So we replaced that future publication with another option where they could write in their own reason if they had some case that they needed to make. Then we would consider it. And usually the reasoning that we found that they're putting into this other option is still future publication that they don't want their data available before they have the chance to publish it. So the last option is the creative writing, which we have worked with our English department for certain students that never want their work to be available. And then here you can see the breakdown of those reasons over time. So the file, a patent and the sponsored research aren't chosen very often. We only have a few creative writing students and then prior publication has tended to be a more popular reason for embarking with future publication being the most popular reason until we took that away in 2019. And then we started to see those numbers going down. And that's also when we started having conversations with students talking a little bit further about their choice. And that started happening in 2020. And you can see it's also continued to decrease a little bit in 2021. We decided to go back and look at the departments that are asking for embargoes the most often since 2017. And the breakdown is that we have English coming in at 23 embargoes since that time and 19 embargoes have come from animal dairy and veterinary sciences. Then it's chemistry and biochemistry at 14 and tied at 11 we have our biological engineering, electrical and computer engineering and lastly the communicative disorders and deaf education. And we see the same departments asking for embargoes and they tend to have the same reasons that they're indicating as they do that. Okay, thanks Becca. So now I'm going to talk a little bit about how we have responded to all of this information that we have gathered and kind of the efforts that we have made to provide some education and start some conversations about the embargo choices that our students are making. So, what the first thing we did is just asked our students and their advisors to tell us a little bit more about what they were choosing and why they were choosing that so in 2020. We essentially put together a boilerplate email that when students would submit their, their embargo request form which kind of initiates the whole process, and they would make that prior publication selection. We, we developed this boilerplate email and we sent it back to those students and to their advisors kind of asking them some questions you know prior publication would indicate that they were pursuing a publication option for their thesis or dissertation and that a publisher was saying that they considered that the, the thesis or dissertation being available in a repository as prior publication and therefore wouldn't consider it. So, we, we wanted to know a little bit more about that and we framed the email that way so we didn't want the students and the advisors to think that we were, you know, judging their choice or second guessing things. So we framed it as the library wants to know more about this because that's an important information, a bit of information for us if publishers are making these statements or these requirements. And we want to know about that so we can better advise our students and, and the faculty. And so, in sending those emails and getting the responses, what it revealed is that many of the students or their advisors, so they were actually thinking about future publication, they weren't in a situation that they had already identified a publisher and been told this, but they weren't imagining that they might want to publish on this which is completely reasonable and that they, there is this as I think we all know kind of myth out there that there are publishers that consider an ETD and availability and an open repository as prior publication. And so, there was just generally some confusion, you know, about the embargo about these policies, the reasons, etc. So, really these emails open the door for us to have a conversation with the students and the faculty and we could share information about publisher policies so when they told us oh I'm looking at this journal or this publisher potentially. We could point them to the place on, hopefully point them to the place on that publisher website that specifically said that the availability of content or material in an ETD via an open repository wouldn't preclude you know them considering a manuscript for publication. So that has been a really useful tool and having those conversations. And so just a little bit more about that. So we emailed 12 students in 2020, and there were three who decided to change their reasons so they didn't decide not to embargo, but they at least were more informed about the decision they were making and why they were making it so we still consider that a good thing. And then there are three who decided not to embargo after all. And in 2021, we contacted 15 students, seven chose to change their reason. So again, hopefully that's because they had a little more information, and three decided not to embargo after all. And then the other thing we did was last spring, right in the thick of the pandemic, we offered an embargo workshop that we promoted to graduate students, advisors and program coordinators across the university. And we had about 30 attendees from a wide variety of departments and we just shared some of that same information about publisher policies. You know the reasons for embargoes what an embargo meant what it didn't mean. And we got some good feedback via the survey we had some good questions. And I think that this is something that we would try doing again, and hopefully in an eventual post pandemic world. We would have a little bit more engagement with our folks on campus. So where we are now and what we're planning to do next so as you saw in the numbers back as shared we do think we're seeing you know the spring and summer 2021 numbers are trending down. We've got our fingers crossed about the full picture for 2021. We are seeing some of the same departments and advisors. So that's something we're continuing to think about. And then the fall 2021 those numbers will really you know round out our calendar year 2021 and determine if in fact our numbers have gone down overall. And so what next what we're planning next is to offer another workshop, as I said we'd like to do that again. But we're also in conversations with our liaisons as I mentioned we have these you know frequent flyer departments or advisors and so we're talking to those liaisons about how we might do some particular outreach to those individuals or those departments again just to make sure that they have all the information. Before they're making these decisions. And then also beginning some discussions at the higher university level with our graduate council that oversees all graduate education to talk about embargoes. You know across the university and make sure that the university still you know is behind these policies that were established you know long before Becca or I worked here. So I wrapped us up very quickly there because we were running out of time but thank you. I'm going to stop screen sharing and have a couple of minutes for questions. If there are questions in the chat we can answer those or folks want to jump on and ask a question we'd be happy to answer in our last couple minutes. And I saw there were a couple questions in the Q&A. So there are stakeholders again for who is approving the embargo request is the library, their advisor, their department head and the vice provost of graduate studies. So all four of those have to sign off and it goes to the library first which is where I get the chance to kind of talk with them before it goes anywhere else. And then the embargo period is five years they don't have another choice unless they email and discuss with us but as far as getting the actual approval it is five years and that's the only choice. So really their choice there is that they could contact us before the five years were up and asked to have the embargo canceled and we have had a couple of departments where they really only wanted embargoed for a year because it's very fast paced research and so, and this is mostly just for ease of processing, you know we weren't going to give them one year three year five year options so. Yeah, yeah. So someone else had asked if we have a list of those publisher policies I do keep track of the ones that we have checked and talked with students about. So yes, I could share that if you would like to contact us. Are there any other questions we have about two minutes left. Hi Natalia, did you have a question. Hi, yeah real quick. Was there something that prompted this research or doing interventions maybe like intervention is a strong word but doing that the talks with the faculty or. Because we have an embargo and we we we've looked it over the years how many students embargo and what percentage it is and but there really isn't a, you know an impetus to kind of ask why it was it kind of just a. You know an emphasis on behalf of the grad school or the library or just curious about the, the why behind it. Yeah, so I think it was. It was mostly on our part that we had seen kind of an increase some semesters and we didn't understand why and like I had said we really value open access and not wanting our students to embargo so in order for that to. Go down at all we figured that it would have to come from us communicating more. But Becky, did you want to add something. I think I yeah I completely agree with that I'll just add that I think we also suspected that there was some confusion out there as I said I think we all know there are these myths that Oh, a publisher won't consider your manuscript and. I just wanted to find ways to help people know that that's not true so that was that was part of it. Yeah, can you guys say how long you've had your particular embargo policy the five year policy do you know like when that was implemented. As far as I know it's been that as long as I've been here which has been since 2000 2012 I started so. I'm sorry but we've reached time. I want to thank you all for coming. The next session will start in five minutes so and they'll be a sponsor. I have a message on the stage right now and then our next session. Thank you both. I appreciate you coming in presenting today. Thank you. Thanks Valerie. Thanks everyone.


This video will talk about arithmetic sequences if a fixed constant is added to each successive term then we have an arithmetic sequence. So here's the definition. Given a sequence of a's of 1, a's of 2, a's of 3, these are just the different terms all the way up to the nth term where k and n are natural, notice I said natural we talked about that in the last video, numbers and k has to be less than n then if there exists a common difference such that a's of k plus 1 minus a's of k is equal to d for all k so then if that's true we have an arithmetic sequence. So what in the world does this mean? This really just means take the second term and subtract the first one a's of k plus 1 minus a's of k so you're going to take negative 2 minus 1 and that's going to give us negative 3 and we're going to take negative 5 minus a negative 2 which is really plus 2 and get negative 3 and negative 8 minus a negative 5 which is really plus 5 so we have negative 3 or negative 11 minus or plus 8 would give us negative 3, negative 14 plus 11 is going to give us negative 3 so the common difference is negative 3 and this is arithmetic. So we want to write the first five terms in arithmetic sequence given this information where we know we have a's of 1 is equal to and I'm going to rewrite this because it's kind of hard to see it so I'm going to write it as 1 half and d is equal to 0.25 or 1 fourth we know the first one is 1 half and then we have to add 1 fourth to that this is really then 2 over 4 so we have 3 over 4 so 3 fourths and then now we have 3 fourths and we again have to add 1 fourth so that's nice we have 4 over 4 or just 1 and we have to add 0.25 again or 1 fourth more so if we take 4 over 4 and add another 1 over 4 we're going to have 5 over 4 and if we did it in fractions that would be fine it'd get it in decimals so it would really be like 0.5 and then 0.75 and then 1 and this would be 1.25 so you notice in the sequence that we just did the common difference was 0.25 we added 0.25 over and over again and repeatedly adding the same numbers really just multiplying that common difference like this we start with a's of 1 and we want 0 common differences we need it to stay 1 so this would be 1 plus 0 is 1 well we can start with that first term again but this time I would like to have 1 common difference and that would give me 2 times 1 plus 1 or 3 but this is the most important thing that we're looking at right here is what is happening right here so we take our first term and we add to that now 2 common differences and if I have my fourth term I would take my first term and I would add 3 common differences to it so what does that mean in general? well I take my first term whatever that is and I add to that my common difference and then we have to figure out how many of them we need well if you look at this for the a's of 1 term I needed 0 a's of 1 I needed 0 a's of 2 I needed 1 a's of 3 I needed 2 a's of 4 I needed 3 so do you see the pattern happening here? how did these two numbers compare? 2 compared to 1 3 compared to 2 4 compared to 3 a's of n would be I'll put it over here this would be a's of n and we're letting this be if this was 1 and this was 0 1 less 2 minus 1 would be 1 3 minus 1 would be 2 4 minus 1 would be 3 so we're going to say n that's that little number down there minus 1 we need 1 less common difference than the term number and that's what we're going to say is our general formula a's of n let's put it up here again is the first term plus our common difference whatever that is times n minus 1 so we want to find the general term well what do we need? we need an a's of 1 and we need a common difference well a's of 1 is always your first term so we know that's 7 they gave us our first term so we're good and then D is remember we're going to take 4 minus 7 and that's equal to negative 3 and we double check we take 1 minus 4 and that's again negative 3 and if I look at it looks like 1 plus negative 3 we get needed negative 2 negative 2 plus negative 3 we get needed negative 5 so it looks like my common difference is negative 3 then we have here a's of n is going to be equal to our first term 7 plus our common difference of negative 3 times n minus 1 well in your book they're going to want you to take it just a little bit further so they're going to want you to say 7 minus 3n distribute the negative 3 and then negative 3 times negative 1 would be plus 3 so they really want you to say that a's of n is equal to negative 3n plus 10 there's your nth term so the second part of this problem says find the 6th term well that means we want a's of 6 so negative 3 and then we put our 6 in here because that's the n and then plus 10 then that would give us negative 18 plus 10 or a's of 6 is going to be equal to negative 8 you may notice that when you look at these general terms they look very linear and common difference is actually equivalent to the slope of a line so now they're going to ask us to find the number of terms so we need to know what that n is well we know that a's of n is equal to 42 and remember the formula again a's of n is equal to a's of 1 plus your d times n minus 1 well let's plug and chug what we know a's of 1 is 4 and then plus d but we know that to be 2 and we don't know what the rest of that is n minus 1 because we're going to try to solve for n but we do know on this side what a's of n is equal to it's equal to 42 okay so we just plugged in what we knew now we're going to just solve the equation I am going to simplify over here 42 is equal to 4 plus 2n minus 2 so 42 will be equal to 4 minus 2 would be 2 plus 2n subtract the 2 to get it to the other side so I'd have 40 is equal to 2n and if I divide by 2 I find out that n is equal to 20 which means 20 terms and this is find the nth term we know the n is 20 a's of 4 which is a's of 1 plus 2 times 20 minus 1 and we should get 42 if we did this correctly because we already know what a's of n is so 4 plus 2 times 19 and that's going to give us 38 plus 4 which is going to be 42 so we did it right so what else can we do with these arithmetic sequences again a's of n is equal to a's of 1 plus d times n minus 1 keep that in mind find the common difference d and the value of a's of 1 given all of this a's of 5 is equal to negative 17 a's of 11 is equal to negative 2 oh wow we don't really know a whole lot here do we so let's see if we can alter what's going on here let's say that we wanted to start with a's of 11 and I have to plug in as much as I can and then find one variable well I want to first find that common difference so I can say this is equal to a's of 5 plus if I have a's of 5 a's of 11 was bigger and how many more common differences did I need I needed 6 more common differences and that's really because we started with 5 plus 6 will equal 11 this was the 5th term I needed 6 more common differences to actually be at the 11th term now let's plug and check what we know a's of 11 is negative 2 a's of 5 is negative 17 plus 6d and we're trying to solve for d add 17 to this side and you're going to have 15 is equal to 6d dividing by 6 we have 15 divided by 6 but we can reduce that which will make the next part easier so if I reduce that they're both divisible by 3 so d is 5 over 2 now what do we do we got all kinds of things we can do but we kind of thought about this a little bit before I could say that I know let's say a's of 5 because it'll be smaller I don't know what a's of 1 is and I do know what my common difference is I have a's of 1 and I need a's of 5 so how many common differences do I need I need 4 of them or 5 minus 1 would be 4 so let's plug in what we know a's of 5 was negative 17 I could have used negative a's of 11 here as well it really doesn't matter which one I use a's of 1 is what I'm looking for plus when I multiply here I'm going to have the 4 and the 2 cancel each other to have just 5 times 2 or 10 and if I subtract the 10 then I know that a's of 1 is equal to negative 27


Well hello and welcome to Vlun day four. I am back at the townhouse eating a very nutritious breakfast of course. I am waiting for one of the painters in the crew to come here. He said he'd be here a little bit after nine. He wanted to get some work done for the day and then my friend Amanda is coming over here probably about nine thirty or so with her daughter Olivia and then we're going to Ikea which is exciting. So I am actually gonna buy a dining table for this area. So I will take you around Ikea. I'm gonna eat and wait for everybody to get here and I'm really excited to show Amanda the space too and I'll probably get her on camera. She's been on camera before so I think she's gonna be okay with that. All right well I will check in with you guys in just a little bit. We're here. It's happening. Okay so this is the dining table I'm gonna go with. It's the ingotorpe maybe. I don't know it's $3.29 in the white and it actually pulls out but you can like slide it back in. I'm not gonna do it one-handed but here is the table in the white but I will show you a table in the black at full extension over on the other side here. So this looks like really crazy because it's actually two tables so this is a regular table not full extension. This is a table full extension so the little extendable leaf is right on the end. I hope you guys can see it. It's like right there is where that seam is but yeah I just I think this is actually gonna be really really nice in that space. I'm very excited. Oh there's Mandy pants. We are done shopping finally but we need to pick up a table downstairs. They're not ready yet so we decided to partake in some lunchage. So Swedish meatballs for me. Swedish meatballs for Miss Olivia and mac and cheese. Yep you don't get to choose when you're on this by the way. I know. What did you get by the way? This is stuffed chicken. It looks delicious so we're gonna eat and then go back to the house and unload and I will do an Ikea haul when I get back there. Hey y'all I am back at the New Town house and here is my Ikea haul. I will actually first let's go into the garage and I will show you the two pieces that I got. One is a piece of furniture that table I already showed you and then I actually picked up a mirror as well. Let's take a look here. So this is the mirror that I got. Let me do this a little bit better. This is the Hovet mirror H-O-V-E-T. I will leave a link below if I can find it on the Ikea website. I'm not gonna take it out of the packaging yet because I am doing some painting upstairs which is where it's gonna go. This is the dining table and then that is other parts of my dining table as well and then it is the if you want to know it's the ingotorp in the white and it's the rectangular version. I know previously I had posted I think it was an Instagram about like what well about what dining chair you guys preferred and I showed a oval or a circular table. I decided to go against that just because I felt like that didn't fit the space as well so I just wanted something that had like squared up edges but it is gonna be a rectangle even without the leaf so I'm very excited about that. So let's go over all of things that I got at Ikea today. Alright so I actually got an Ikea bag which I didn't end up using but whatever. Okay so I got this and this is a got egg. This is a placemat I figured this would be nice for on the floor with like Doyle's dishes and stuff and then for underneath that just to like soak up any moisture that might come along these are just some cork placemats and if you guys want to know it is the abskid. I don't know how to say any of the stuff you guys so I apologize. Alright so I got a bunch of these containers and I don't know what line this is. Let me just look really quick. Doesn't say anything on there. Oh it is the horkin. I figured these would be nice for like some of my dry stuff like my pastas and rices and stuff. My girlfriend that was with me Amanda she said that she uses these for her pastas and I was like oh that's such a great idea to not have just like random you know boxes of stuff everywhere so this is like a longer one for just you know like your angel hair or your actual like spaghetti and then I got two of whoops those are not the same size. I pretty much got two of every container to be completely honest so here's my two little kind of like mid-size. I've got two of the bigger size this one right here and then I've got two of the little like shorties like this but I just like that they're sealed and you know I don't know it just makes me feel better and I love like a good clear jar and I might actually end up like putting labels on these at some point as to like what they are. I also got these IKEA bags they're that's the name of the bag but they are I don't know these are just some bags they're like a two point or a three quart and a one quart is what these are and then I got some smaller ones and this is the same brand but it's a 34 ounce and then a 14 ounce so like a 1 liter and a 0.4 liter so yeah and then I got these I'm a big fan of cork coasters however my cork coasters that I currently have are flat and I do like that there's a little lip on these so like the moisture and stuff that's in them let's see I don't know I don't know what brand this is it just says two times IKEA 365 plus I don't know I don't know you guys but I got two of these because I do have a bunch of cork coasters that I can use for other things but when I have like water bottles and things like that that produce a lot of condensation I figured those these would be kind of nice and then this is actually the first thing I picked up there's three bins but they have they're on casters you guys I actually found these in the children's department and I got the clear ones there was a bunch of different other colors and then the tops are right over here but the nice thing is you can stack these as well because when you put the tops on there's like actually like a little divot for another caster to go on to if you don't want to do that so I figured that these would actually look really nice in the closet over here on the floor so either I'm gonna put them all on the floor or I'm just gonna like stack three of them together so yeah but that is it for the IKEA haul hope you guys enjoyed the IKEA haul also I totally forgot to mention this morning but I am finally for the first time wearing my clean and dirty t-shirt it says clean body dirty mind which is by the way hilarious I will leave a link to her Etsy shop below she does all natural products and she came out with these kind of like I don't know if they're limited edition but she came out with all these like really funny shirts so I was excited also there's something else that I'm wearing that's very different for me I'm wearing a watch today I will link this shop down below I actually just got this in the mail yesterday but this is my first day wearing it and I kind of I kind of love it you guys it's really cool so I'll just I'll leave it linked below and I'll put down exactly which one that I ended up getting so anyway if you guys are interested but I've been loving it but I've been loving wearing a watch it's kind of cool to have like a little bit of weight on your arm I don't know but I never wear a watch but this is gonna be kind of a cool watch journey so I'm gonna wear it tomorrow too but anyway I need to run over to the store and grab some degreaser because my mom and uncle and actually I had two uncles over here today two of my mom's brothers came over here today because they were interested to see the place and then because of some flooring prep this is gonna be happening after the painters are gone but they were just available my fridge is now gone because it's out in the garage and then my stove is gone as well and that's out in the garage but there's some major degreasing that needs to happen these are the original appliances and I don't know if they were ever moved ever but the 409 is just not cutting it is what my mom was saying so I am gonna go grab some degreaser and bring it back to the house actually no I'm gonna bring it back to my parents place cuz I'm not gonna come back here for the rest of the day I don't think because I need to do some YouTube work I still haven't even edited or uploaded any of my footage from yesterday's vlog so I gotta get that up and I have to film my Financial Friday as well as my plan with me which I need to do when I get home so anyway I am gonna leave here and I will check in with you guys in just a little while I see you Doyle Doyle is begging for my food because I've got subway in here right now don't mind the mess I am in the process of trying to move so I am gonna end out the vlog for today I am currently trying to upload we're not upload actually edit for the first time because I have been out all day as you guys saw I was at IKEA with my friend Amanda and back at the house and I ran around and did a couple little things that I didn't vlog because you know picking up cleaner at Menards is not vlog worthy I don't think but anyway I am gonna jet I just did some filming as well so that is all done and in my computer so I am gonna get the vlog up tonight for you guys and then I am gonna work on my plan with me which will be up at 9 a.m. central standard time tomorrow as normal so anyway I am gonna go for now but I hope you guys have a great day and are enjoying the vlogs and I will see you guys tomorrow for two videos bye guys


I need friends. And obviously we're starting. It hasn't been easy though. It's been a very frantic search. Something that I've learned since getting to LA is how fast their market moves, especially for rentals and apartments, specifically. My roommate and I would look the more like look in the mornings every single day, send each other apartments. And these places would be snatched up by the time it came to the afternoons like applications would already be in. So it's definitely been a very arduous process trying to find an apartment that not only is one that we can actually have the ability to get the first application into and actually have interest from the landlords, but also an apartment that kind of meets all of the requirements that we set for ourselves, you know, two bedroom, two bath, ideally close to the beach, which I think you'll be pretty happy with what we ended up getting. And I'm very excited to move in today. So the plan for the day, step one, I actually have to move in. Two, I'd like to get everything out of the current place that I'm staying. I've been crashing with a friend during my apartment search. And three, I'd really like to document the process. And it's going to be an exciting day. Should be hearing from my roommate soon, he's driving out from his home. We're going to meet and start moving everything in. I'm excited, but also kind of, I don't know, I'm nervous. I'm nervous to see how it all turns out. Nervous to see what the place looks like. And because I've never actually visited it, I've only seen pictures and videos, because my roommate did all the touring. So we'll see. And you guys will see along with me.  Okay, we are all packed up. Everything that I've been using to live out of for the past two and a half weeks is finally moving was an absolute fiasco. There were tow trucks involved, lots of sweat. It took hours. I probably couldn't have even filmed if I tried. But the good thing is, is we are mostly moved in at this point. Still have a lot of stuff to buy to furnish this beautiful apartment. But as you can see, I'm sitting in my new common room right now. And it is just absolutely empty way to couch. We have a coffee table and luckily we have Wi-Fi set up. But other than that, it is completely empty. So we're gonna have to do, put some serious work into furnishing this place soon. I'll have to do a full apartment tour soon. But we got the main room with a kitchen right there. You got our couch. And then I have a full bedroom to myself. Excuse the mess, but it is somewhat set up for the moment. Bed, bookshelf, desk. Prop this thing back in the tripod. So the move was a, the move was a mess. But obviously it was successful in the end. I am excited because I'm about to go cook my very first meal in the new apartment. It's almost lunchtime. So I'm going to whip up some eggs and bacon. And then I want to talk a little bit about what moving is actually like in the military. Specifically moving in the military. So for those of you that didn't know, I received my commission into the military from Air Force ROTC at Yale. So I did that program for four years commissioned and now I'm a second lieutenant of the military. Obviously anything that I say here does not reflect the official views of the military. This is just my own personal opinion and my own personal experiences. So with me receiving my commission, I'm obviously required to head off to my first assignment which happened to be LA. So that's where I'm currently stationed. So since my first assignment was out here in LA, the military was required to help fund my PCS, my permanent change of station from Virginia all the way out here to LA, which, you know, they help pay for the travel, but they also help pay to move my stuff. So there are two options. I could either, you know, move my own stuff and get paid per pound to, you know, rent a U-Haul and drive across the country. But I personally did not have enough stuff for that to even be remotely worth it. I only had a couple hundred pounds of stuff that I wanted moved because I tried or I decided to buy everything out here. So they showed up to my house, picked up all my stuff, gave me an inventory sheet, moved out to LA, gave them a call and they helped move me in yesterday. All the stuff, you know, was just sitting in storage for a couple weeks while I was moving out here. So it was a pretty easy process to be completely honest. So that may have been super boring to me explaining that, but I know when I did my college vlogs, you guys always liked when I gave a little bit of, you know, perspective into my time at ROTC and kind of the military. So you guys want me to add some more, you know, notes on my experience in the military and how that kind of affects, it's not going to be the main focus of this channel going forward by any means, but that is the reason I'm out here in LA and I'm super excited to be here and start my career. So with that, I'm going to finish up breakfast and then I want to show you my favorite part about this apartment. A lot of cool things about this apartment. Hopefully some of them I will share in future videos, but there's one key factor that we really took into account when choosing a spot and it's that we wanted to see the water. Yeah, so we are very lucky to not only have found an apartment that we like, but also one that's had such a great location. So I guess I'm a Californian now. So if you guys live in LA, hit me up. I need friends, fellow YouTubers in LA. Let's collab, let's do something. I'm excited to meet some people, explore this new city. With that, I hope you enjoyed coming along with me as I moved across the country to a good place that I now call home. See you guys next time.


bright light, it's much more than a business. It's an opportunity that we have to change things. To make big changes you should start step by step and this event today is a relevant step. I want to really welcome you today and you may ask why I was invited to be here. So why we are doing this event today? We accomplished what we were aiming for this event which is get together with a group of leaders senior executives and managers and strategic thinkers to discuss how can we improve strategy implementation. Innovation here is about improving your businesses going from product to services for example over here is really about reinvention. It's not about selecting ideas it's about you know almost with an evolutionary process getting the best teams with the best ideas to stand out and that's how you'll get the real growth engines and that's what the great innovators of our time actually do. I was most blown away by Lou Gersner. I had never heard him speak and he made some amazing points about the gap between strategy and execution. One is the CEO the head of the organization does not take the time to communicate a sense of urgency throughout the organization and the second thing is that the organization doesn't realign all the processes inside the institution. So this idea that you can look at the company in this simple piece part way and run each piece part well and it'll add up to something good is just not showing itself to actually work and I think it's becoming less effective as corporations get bigger and more complicated. Strategy implementation is a challenge in all environments because people are difficult to change and as a consequence when you get an environment that's disruptive it's even worse because people don't want to react. At the basic level from a strategy perspective you solve problems and you make sure that everybody around you is rallied around the same set of solutions and goes and helps implement those solutions. So that's what is exciting about it is you get a chance to change an industry which is not something everyone gets a chance to do every day. I encourage organizations to think about digital evolution because evolution encompasses within it the idea that you're going to be continuously adapting and continuously changing and respond to how the market is moving. One thing I would love for leaders to think about is the ethics of what are the values that we as a society are going to strive towards. The biggest takeaway for me that my experiences were common and that the challenges that I've been wrestling with are shared. I have learned many lessons for example sense of urgency and a portfolio of business models yeah I can learn very much. One of the ones that I will definitely take home that you don't need one approach to strategy but you may need multiple approaches. What I'm arguing is that we really need a new playbook for strategy where change is the thing that's normal rather than stability and we recognize that more and more of our world is project based and what that means in turn is the individual careers and individual moves are going to be geared towards what projects we're working on. Some people call this the tour of duty economy. You know everybody can change the world.


Good afternoon, everybody. I hope everybody's joining us from all parts of our virtual world. You're very welcome. This lunchtime, my name is Suzanne Keating. I'm the CEO of Docus, the Association of Irish NGOs. I'm very honored to be chairing this webinar today, the fourth in the IIEA Development Matters Lecture Series, which is of course, supported by Irish aid. We are here of course, to be inspired by Miss Aya Chebi, former AU Special Envoy on Youth and Chair of the Nala Feminist Collective, who's been very generous enough to come here with us today. My only regret, of course, is that we're not here in person so that we could show you our beautiful city of Dublin, but I can assure you the sun is shining today for a change. And as many of you know, I arose to fame during the 2010-2011 Tunisian Revolution and since then has won many awards for her persuasive and influential role as a Pan-African feminist. She's also, she was designated as one of Africa's 50 most powerful women on the Forbes list and is recipient of the 2019 Gates Campaign Award. Perhaps much more important to us and to Irish listeners, she is the only Tunisian and one of the youngest ever people to be nominated for the Tipperary International Peace Award. It's absolutely amazing. Miss Chebi will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so and then we'll go to Q&A. As always, please join our discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see there on your screen. Don't hold back with the questions. Please feel free to send them at any time throughout the session and we'll try to get as many answered as possible. Just a quick reminder today's presentation and Q&A are both on the record. Do also encourage you to tweet away using the handle at IIEA. We're also live streaming this morning's discussion, so a very welcome to all of you out there tuning in via YouTube. I know my kids would be delighted as they know how to find out more than I do. But before we hand over to Miss Chebi, I would like to give the floor to Phelan McLaughlin, head of Global Programs Unit in Irish Aid to deliver the opening remarks on behalf of Irish Aid. Thank you. Well, thanks very much, Suzanne and hello to everyone who's watching today. I'd like to begin by sincerely thanking indeed Aya Chebi for being with us today to discuss the power of youth communication and the SDGs. It's a real pleasure for me to represent Irish Aid today at this event. And as Suzanne mentioned, we're very pleased to support the IIEA's Development Matters series as we facilitate discussion of important aspects of global development. And today's discussion is particularly timely as we try to refocus on the global challenge of achieving the SDGs. And refocusing is particularly important at this time when we're seeing a lot of the gains of recent years being eroded or in fact, being wiped out by the effects of the pandemic. Over the course of a year and a half, we've seen 100 million people being pushed into extreme poverty. And last year alone, 101 million people, children indeed, fell below the minimum reading proficiency level. And while we hope that once the pandemic is over, we'll see children returning to school. We know that for many thousands, that won't be the case. And that girls in particular will be the ones who remain at home. And this is at a time when the proportion of young people in the general population is increasing in many parts of the world, in Africa, in South Asia and elsewhere. So we have this multi-dimensional challenge of ensuring that the needs of these young populations are catered to, that they receive the education that they need, that they have the opportunities that they require and that they have a voice in the decisions that are gonna have a profound effect on them, on their future and the future of the planet more generally. So that's quite a challenge ahead of us. And it's really, I suppose, the crux of today's discussion. And I can think of few people better qualified than Ayesha B to help us reflect on the substance of these points. Suzanne's already listed many of her enormous achievements. She's extremely well qualified to speak on these matters. She's a graduate of the Tunis-Almanar University. She's received both a Fulbright scholarship and a Moe Ibrahim scholarship for further study at Georgia's South University and at Zoos in London, respectively. Suzanne mentioned she was the first AU Special Envoy for Youth and is currently the chair of the Nala Famous Collective. Once again, Aya, thanks so much for joining us today and I'm really looking forward to hearing your input and to the discussion that takes place afterwards. Thank you. Thank you so much for this beautiful and generous introduction. Thank you, Suzanne, and thank you to the Irish Association of NGOs. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the Institute of International European Affairs for the invitation. This is a really important conversation we are having today, the power of youth in communicating and delivering the SDGs. And I think already having this topic on the series shows how much there is interest in youth agency. So I'm really looking forward to the Q&A and to hearing your perspectives as well. And I'm also happy to see Irish Aid supporting this series and this talk in particular. I think the simple answer to this topic is obviously we are, you know, the most innovative, the youngest and the coolest generation and we are qualified to deliver SDGs but the answer is much more complex than that. And I'm gonna try to unpack that and I want to structure my keynote around three aspects that I think define youth agency during the past decade. And those are voice, power and solidarity. So if I would make a reflection on this past decade when we see people taken to the streets today across the world to demand rights, when we see the influence of social media, when we see new ways of organizing and youth led social movements. If we reflect where it all started, how it all started, it actually started in my country Tunisia 10 years ago, 28 days of protest sparked by self-immolation of Muhammad Bozizi. I'm sure you remember that picture but really fueled by years and years of high unemployment, corruption, lack of political freedoms. And then 14 of January, 2011, we ousted 23 years dictatorship. Actually I was 23 at the time and it's the only president I've ever seen in my entire life. So it was a turning point for my generation. I think we were the first to create a Facebook event not to invite you for a marriage celebration or graduation party, but to go on a protest. Basically we turned social media into a tool for social change. And we know that every revolution in history was led by young people. It always had a youth face. Back then I was on the streets. I remember the noise, I remember the silence, the tear gas, the live bullets. I was blogging, I am tiny in size with big camera. So I got arrested, I got jailed. I got deported and blacklisted later when I went to Egypt. But to sum up that moment or phase of my life, and I think by extension the youth agency back then, it would be about the struggle for voice, the struggle to be heard, the story of feeling powerless, angry, frustrated, and then really finding power in your voice to change things, to do something, to have the courage to take to the streets, to be on the front line. And I think being part of the revolution made me and many young people of my generation fearless. And it wasn't a choice for us, the millennials. It was the fact that without this change, my generation would have to be condemned in this continuous state of weighthood, waiting for adulthood, waiting for employment, for political inclusion, for social equity, for leadership, basically waiting to become. Now, after Tunisia, there was a wave of uprisings and revolutions across Africa, Egypt, Libya, in Burkina Faso, in Senegal, recently in Sudan. And usually after these acts of bravery, when youth lead positive change, the results is always a vacuum. When we think the bad guy that we kicked out is not empowered anymore, we quickly realize, oops, it's actually the whole system now. We're fighting against, it's the establishment, it's the status quo, and it's not just one individual. And usually this vacuum is hijacked by older generations who claim to be more politically savvy. And I think that's when it becomes a struggle for power. This is when we realize as young people, voice is not enough if we don't have a seat at the table. When I started traveling across the continent, supporting these youth movements, I started to see that this is actually a generational crisis. If we look at Africa right now, the average age of African leaders is 64 and the average age of the population is almost 20. It's 19.5. So we have at least 40 years of generation gap in leadership. And it seems to me that conflict on the continent is aggravated by this lack of communication between generations. We have the generation that fought for independence, the generation that built the African nation and the current youthful population really inheriting all of this inequality and all of these challenges. So even though the leaders who joined governments where they were young during independence days in the 50s and 60s, slowly over the years, the political system started to see young people as a threat or as a dangerous class of the masses who want to take over power. And on the other hand, people in power are perceived by young people as these corrupt old men overstaying, not listening to their grievances, not representative of the current needs and solutions. So there is this dichotomy and this distrust which really pushed youth out of leadership, out of governance and negotiation tables and pushed some to die in the Mediterranean, pushed others to go into violence because eventually when individuals are deprived of their political socioeconomic rights, they are more likely to feel rewarded when they join violent groups. And this marginalization that were the youngest population in the world, 65% actually of Africa is now under 30. And yet the most insecure, the most unemployed and barely surviving day in and day out, this perception of injustice really exacerbated this distrust and tension between generations. So I wanted to try to bridge this gap and turn it into a powerful space for action, particularly for the SDGs. I jumped into the belly of the beast to shake things up in the corridors of power. I became the youth envoy of a union of 55 member states. And there I think I stopped fighting to prove anything or to prove that we are demographic dividend. We deserve a seat at the table. And I really started to fight for, for institutional inclusion, for young people occupying leadership positions they deserve for treating young people as peace builders and not gun holders. And I managed to get heads of states and government to listen. When my discourse shifted to, we're not going to kick all of you out of power. I thought at some point that was the only solution, but actually that will bring a vacuum. What we actually need right now in Africa is intergenerational co-leadership. And I don't mean by that passing the torch to younger generation or passing the legacy or passing all these institutions, but I mean co-creating and reforming the system together now. So we don't fail the next generation. So we don't become products of failing systems and just continue to perpetuate them. So co-leadership really means that with wisdom and innovation we can achieve the sustainable development goals. And so I started to build intergenerational dialogues on the importance of co-leadership. And I would ask heads of state and government, can you have young people as your advisors? Can you have third or half of your cabinet young? Can you stop extending retirement age and get youth into public service? Can you allow waivers for young electoral candidates? In democratic transition, can we make sure that young people take the rightful place in leadership? Can you have young ministers actually in charge of ministry of youth because most of them are not? So really facilitating this dialogue to open those channels of communication with young people. And we even put together a report called Greater Inclusion of African Youth in Public Service and Governance. We put six case studies of African countries that actually succeeded in youth inclusion, showing the leaders that we don't need to look elsewhere in the world, we just need to look to our neighbor and see how well they are doing when they include young people, when young people co-lead with them. And they actually listened. I mean, intergenerational dialogues work. And as a result, Namibia, Chad, Ethiopia, many other countries last year appointed young ministers for the first time. Sudan appointed young female minister of youth after the revolution. Algeria is subsidizing electoral fees for youth. The AUP Security Council adopted a continental framework on youth and so on and so forth. But my proudest moment really during my term as youth envoy was to witness the collection of over 1,000 guns in Rumbak in South Sudan in voluntary disarmament. So without stigmatizing youth as perpetrators of violence. And to me, that's the biggest win because that's where we change the narrative, we change the behavior, we change the discourse and the approach to youth agency that projecting into the public imagination or rhetorical fear to justify treating young people as suspects of terrorism is not the solution. Or the collective punishment of youth through discriminatory policies is not the solution. Because this is a generation of change makers who actually revolutionized technology and who inspired new ways of citizen engagement. So we need to channel their frustration into governance, not marginalize them. And to see the small impact the past two years of intergenerational co-leadership make me believe that this has the potential to be an approach for conflict prevention. Because helping to build this relationship of trust would avoid these institutions being rejected by youth and that could prevent a long-term upsurge of violence and continuous cycle of uprisings which we've seen in 2010 when I was in the street. I see the same thing happening in Nigeria last year in the street. It's just a continuation. And I think that's why narratives about youth participation, youth agency, youth leadership are so important. We need to start asking ourselves, are we contributing to narratives of empowerment or disempowerment? There are currently I think two ways the development sector talks about young people either as beneficiary of youth development or as participants in youth led development. And it is often not clear to us whether as a group young people are portrayed as the problem or the solution. And I think bottom line, the narrative should be that youth are drivers, not subject of development. The same way the narrative about security, we need to move from youth peace and security agenda to youth peace and development agenda because when the conversation shifts to development the funding and programs can be redirected to the root causes rather than response programs actually invest in the livelihoods of young people rather than militarization. So narratives really shape policy and policies when implemented really change the lives of young people. I wanna come to the third aspect of youth agency. I think finding power in our voice is a great step. Having a seat at the table is a great step but it's not enough for change to happen. With the speed we need we only have nine years to 2030 our deadline is very close. And we need solidarity, we need collaboration, we need a lie ship. And I think my generation understands that we live in an interconnected words that the more we build on the power of solidarity the more we will be ready for the future. And maybe we understand that because we're either computer natives or internet natives. Maybe that's why all of us migrated online because we believe in a borderless words. And young people are actually the majority online. Ironically, just like we are the majority offline but offline in our countries we mostly did not create the rules. We are products of system created by others. But in the digital space is different. We create the rules and the digital is where there is no visas, the borders collapse. We can actually thrive and innovate and everything is possible with our imagination. And I think solidarity has been really tested during this pandemic. Last year throughout the peak of the pandemic during my mandate as youth envoy I listened to young people in 54 consultations. My office convened with over 22,000 youth. And we actually published a policy paper called Africa Youth Lead. And basically showcasing how African youth were using pan African solidarity and continental response to deal with the pandemic from day one. There was no thinking of this as this is my issue or this affecting me only from day one it was an issue for the continent. And many youth worked in cross border regional networks helping other youth across the continent with information, with raising awareness, with fundraising. It's just amazing because if we look closely to what happened since the outbreak of the pandemic it is the young people within ministries who carried government along. It is young people within civil society who carried society along. It is the young entrepreneurs who set up all these innovation tools. And I used to brief almost on a daily basis different stakeholders on COVID-19 impact on millions of young people who lost their jobs whose education was disrupted. But incredibly despite these hardships they faced the pandemic with such resilience and solidarity, which just reminds me of why. Why I believe in youth power. Why I dedicated my life to galvanize this collective power of young people because one hour generation unite we can make miracles and the pandemic really showed us that. And I think also the pandemic showed us that no one is safe until everyone is safe and how global we are and how our actions affect others cross borders. So if I'm not vaccinated here in Tunis it can affect the safety of anyone elsewhere. But unfortunately many global leaders failed to show and practice solidarity, but young people did not. They care about being global. They care about solving global issues with global solutions. And I think that's why young people can deliver the SDGs. That's why the SDGs need young people to deliver them because the SDGs are global. It's not an index of how each country is doing is actually about how are we all doing together. And a quick example of how youth, when they unite they can do impact is Africa Young Women Beijing Plus 25 Manifesto which I can talk more about later, but in a nutshell 1,500 young women and men came together last year in five regional consultations, developed 10 bold demands with policy outcomes that resulted in this political document, the Manifesto, they organized, mobilized, collected 10,000 signatures. And I just came back from Paris at the Generation Quality Forum where eight out of the 10 demands of this Manifesto were actually incorporated in the final negotiation of member states. I think there are many, many more examples, but I think when young people really mobilize, organize, have a seat at the table, bring their creativity, and especially teach the word and teach global leaders that our voices will only be effective if they are united, unified and collaborative. I think that's when we can talk about implementation of SDGs. So maybe just to conclude, I think our voice, our power and our solidarity is really as young people what we can do to deliver the SDGs. And I think institutions can help by one, recognizing and amplifying these youth voices, these political voices so they can be louder and they can be louder than those dogmatic, hate speech voices that are trying to bring us back. And two is bridging this generational divide and really institutionalizing intergenerational co-leadership to create this powerful space for action on the SDGs. So by 2030, we can see predominantly younger faces in leadership. And three, I think, is rethinking partnership on the SDGs because the struggle of the next decade really requires transnational solidarity. So I'll stop there and I really look forward to the discussion. Thank you. Brilliant, Tia, thank you so much. That was absolutely amazing. And I got so many questions jumping out at me, but do encourage people listening in, also please post your Q&A there so that we can have this discussion. But I am going to abuse my position right now to ask the first question, if you don't mind. I love that you brought back this word, this concept of solidarity. And I do say brought it back because when I started in this business, that's what gave me my motivation and my power. But you've said yourself, it needs to be brought back, all right, back central to the SDGs. But I suppose we had a question about it. I mean, I think Guterres actually said solidarity and multilateralism is needed now more than ever because of the COVID pandemic. And I do like to kind of just ask you from your perspective, knowing also that the pandemic we know has affected poorer countries and poorer people more than others and particularly women and girls. How has the pandemic changed your perspective or given you more inspiration? Perhaps more importantly, some people say the SDGs have lost their way because the pandemic is all consuming. Others would say it's needed now more than ever. I wonder what you would say to that. Yeah, I mean, a really interesting question because we know that we can only thrive after prices.  The pandemic mean that we have health systems to fix, education systems to fix, digital divide to bridge. The pandemic basically tells us what's going on wrong and that we are really slow in accelerating change. I don't think the pandemic here is to stop us from doing everything else and dealing with the pandemic is actually telling us that all of SDGs are intersectional and that you cannot deal with, I don't know, gender-based violence without dealing with health or productive rights without dealing with climate crisis, without dealing with displacement. It's literally the pandemic showed us how all these issues are so intersectional and so linked to each other. So I really do not understand that narrative around, even when funding shifts to the pandemic, right? So when you shift fund into the pandemic meaning you don't have enough fund to deal with emergencies and crises and that you need to take fund from our education of girls who if they are locked in their homes, they will be abused or take the money from the health system that needs to really be resilient to the current emergency. I think we run out of excuses because we always say, oh, when there is a new issue, let's shift everything, our attention, our funding, everything to that issue and forget about everything else. And we're not stopping to say, actually everything else is causing this crisis. So let's deal with all of that. So we don't have any further crises. And in terms of the aspect of solidarity, I think this is something pan African because in the history of the liberation movement, we are taught Ubuntu, which means I am because of who you are, which means my liberation is your liberation. So there is that philosophy of interconnectedness and that my action requires your action and my action affects you, your reality. And I don't think it should be something absent and then brought back and absent. I think it should be consistent. We should be in solidarity at all times. If we wanna, in the fancy words, say it's a multilateralism, okay, but what's multilateralism is actually putting our personal interests behind and putting the collective, the human race, the human family upfront. People before profit, it's putting all of these issues that should be consistently like that, not when we have a pandemic, then now we would remember, oh, we need to stand in solidarity with those who are most affected. No, I mean, people have been in refugee camps for the past two decades. People have been displaced for the past two decades. Climate change have been affecting, have been getting young women out of school actually for the past decade. Who has talked about that? So I think it's really about now taking this moment to make it an opportunity and to recognize that this is the moment for us to activate the SDGs because this is when we can show as the human family that we can have solidarity, that we can get out of this crisis together, you know? And I think that the vaccination conversation, for example, is a great testimony of that. I mean, I was in Paris just two weeks ago and I'm not vaccinated.  Who is not vaccinated here? And there were just four young Africans who came who raised their hand. And then I am, you know, asked to do all of these requirements and tests and confinement and all of these things. But if I had the vaccine, access to the vaccine, you wouldn't have to worry about me.  And I think that's where we need to realize that when we are, when we think global, when we try to support other countries or, you know, the most vulnerable, then the most marginalized, it is to make your life better. It is actually to have for you to have peaceful, equal, more fair words.  We like it or not, we are global. So we need to act like that. Yeah, and I love that. And that's why I love that term solidarity because it really brings the humanness, isn't it? The dignity of us all together. I am now gonna turn to some questions if that's okay. One from Ashlyn Levine, the Youth Engagement Officer at Goal. And I suppose it does touch on that solidarity point but very much related to education.  What do you think about how to integrate critical understandings of governance and public service into education systems so that young people can emerge from their school years ready and confident to participate, there I say, not just as civil society members but as global citizens. Something there around the education specifically.  I think from my personal experience, I come from civil society. I had before being the envoy eight years of activism and not really formal NGO style. I was in movement building and I was in very these loose structures of organizing. So for me, it was a huge shift. And after two years of navigating into governmental space, I am completely convinced that every young person when they got out of school or even what they're still in school, they should have some sort of internship, some sort of programs that make them understand how public service work, that make them experience how public service work and even teach us service, right? Because there is this idea that when you are in position of leadership or when you run for office is this prestigious thing and now you're completely disconnected from reality. It doesn't teach people integrity. It doesn't teach people that you're there to serve that you're actually paid to do this job that people are paying you to do this job. It's the people taxes. So I think there is a lot that we can do in school to integrate the values of service and there is a lot we can do for every young person once they continue their educational journey to experience public service. So we can really navigate these very traditional bureaucratic institution and start to disrupt them because we need to digitalize them. We need to disrupt them. And that cannot happen if young people don't go into these institutions in masses. And we're going on from that beyond education. There's a question from Michael Sullivan, presenter and producer at near FM says how can community broadcasters support this intergenerational understanding, communication and cooperation? I mean, everything starts and end with the community. And we've done a lot of these intergenerational dialogues in communities where especially in Africa you have the elders and the young you have the traditional leaders, the chiefs and the young and there is a dynamics around that. And I think what you could help to do is really facilitate that dialogue because at the end of the day, what young people ask for is access. They want access to conversation. Even here, many young people on the continent cannot access this space because 70% of Africa is offline. Many young people in the communities cannot access those spaces in conversation with the leaders, the decision makers, the elders because of whatever intersection of their gender and their status and their class and layers of marginalization. So I think what you could do really is the facilitation of those intergenerational dialogues and being able to bring the decision makers, the leaders in conversations with young people and then let young people do their magic. They will challenge them, they will put their solutions on the table and they will continue to push beyond that one-time conversation. It has to be continuous so we can really shift the narrative. And that's great. We have a question here from Valerie Duffy who's from the National Youth Council. And I know Valerie and she does exactly that to try and create these spaces for these conversations. Valerie asked this question around how we can build trans-solidarity. And I suppose related to that, I did just want to say, well, first of all, one day we're going to have to get you back to Dublin. Partly not only to meet us all here, but also to meet some of these incredible Irish-African artists that really discovered their voice, I would say, during the lockdown. I know as Docus we had the benefit of Felly Speaks, this incredible Irish-Nigerian spoken word artist do tune into Chyla who has also taken the pop scene by storm. And it just brings me that idea of how we can bring kind of art and campaigning together. Not only in Ireland, but also kind of beyond Ireland and this idea of this transnational solidarity. Again, I'm just interested from your experience, what's worked, what do you think we should be doing more of to create that transnational solidarity? Yeah, I mean, that's amazing to hear. I'm really curious to maybe we can share some links later. I'd love to hear that. So there are different aspects of this. One, I think, is young people in Africa and the African diaspora, which we have a lot of collaboration to facilitate. I think the vibrant scene of young people of African descent across Europe and their voices rising during the pandemic is incredible. And I think that's also solidarity because if we talk about, for example, digital space, right? If it's unfair for the continent, it will actually arise when everything is already, you know, went viral. Yeah, we're late to the party because everyone rises on these news and that's why we don't lead the narrative on the continent. And I feel that a lot of young people in Europe, in Ireland, could be that voice, could be that amplifier of what's happening on the continent and make that viral, make that the mainstream, not the exception. And I think, again, to the fact that we are so interconnected, a lot of the policies that happen in your country or in the European Union or in the United Nations affect what's happening in my continent, what's happening in my country. Again, I mean, sadly, global leaders kind of recognize that they are global only when they meet at the UN, you know, in UNGA and the assembly and they realize, yeah, we need to take collective decisions but they don't realize that. Yes, we are so interconnected on the ground too and every policy you decide in your parliament or in your foreign policy or in your development aid, affect also how young grassroots organizations do their work on the ground, you know, here in Tunis or in Accra or in Lusaka. So I think advocacy, collaborating on advocacy, collaborating on policy change, collaborating on campaigning as young people and we know how to do that. We master the tools of the digital space. We master the tools of organizing. We just need to be better connected. And I think like platforms like this, it has the potential to do that because many of these young people, you know, cannot meet physically in physical spaces or cannot cross in platforms. But if we manage to bring all these powerful voices together, amazing things happen. And I think that's why, for example, I started NALA Feminist Collective. I basically brought together 17 African women feminist under 40 who are young ministers, young parliamentarians, activists, artists. We have Miss Universe 2019.  All of these who have platforms, have following, have influence in their own spaces and they're doing amazing things. Together has the authority then, you know, to challenge. Together has the authority to then be listened to. And I think if we can do more of that as young people across borders, Europe, Africa, other continents, it would be amazing. And it would really accelerate also the way we strategize on the national level. Because a lot of, you know, a lot of, that's why even as young people, we started the blogging.  And that's why we live tweeted the revolution because we wanted to tell our version, our own version of the story. And so the more we connect us, you will know my story. I will know your story. And then I can, you know, be more strategic. I can be more impactful in my, in the way I do my work, which affects your work eventually. I feel a pop song coming on there, as you said, live tweeted the revolution, which is, which is fantastic. Maybe I could ask you a little bit more though about the Nala feminist collective. And I'm, I am quite curious.  I'll confess also, I've never met a Pan-African feminist before. I just wonder over that period of 11 years, what does feminism now, you know, how has it helped you? But also perhaps how has it changed you? Yeah, very good question. I mean, I say I'm a Pan-African feminist because I think there is no Pan-Africanism without feminism. So my grandmothers who fought for independence and who were Pan-Africanists and believed in the liberation of our continent, they were on the frontline. And so if any man who is a Pan-Africanist who doesn't recognize that, then he's not Pan-African. So I think for me, being a Pan-African feminist, it means really we have to rise as a continent for the gender agenda on the continent. And I think like any history, there has been ups and downs, right? So there has been this rise and gains of all of these rights across, you know, these past decades.  But at the same time, I think when we were a Generation Equality Forum and we were reflecting, okay, what happened since 1995 when they met in Beijing and they had the declaration for action. And to me, it's like we're still suffering female genital mutilation, which they're suffering child marriage. We're still having girls getting out of school because of their periods. We're still having gender-based violence in old and in new forms in cyber harassment and, you know, during lockdowns and domestic violence and human trafficking. So it's like, yes, now we have more women leadership. Yes, now we have more women, you know, breaking barriers and breaking these stereotypes about gender roles. Yes, we have, you know, more presence and leadership, but the issues of gender equality still at the bottom of the agenda. And that's globally, that's not only in Africa, but I think in Africa it's because probably we have some of the highest numbers of, you know, FGM, child marriage and all of these issues we're dealing with. And I think also feminism needs, need to be intergenerational and need to have solidarity. Again, you know, because we need to realize that our issues are intersectional. Gender equality is an issue of climate justice as well because they are, these are the women farmers who are affected. These are the women on the coast who are affected. These are the women who are displaced. Gender-based violence needs to be an issue of peace and security and needs to be on the table of the UN Security Council. Yes, we have the women peace and security resolution, but I think until gender-based violence becomes part of the violence discourse, then people and leaders will start acting on it.  So when you're dealing with terrorism and violence, this is also violence. That's when I think, you know, the narrative will start shifting, the policy will start shifting. And for that to happen, we need a feminist intergenerational movement. And in terms of intergenerational, we have also a gap of generation in the feminist movement. We have issues that we are bringing up to the table as young women, as young feminists, the LGBTQI rights, the digital cyber harassment, and so on and so forth. And these are things that with the hardcore feminists of other generation, we have very tough debates around. And so I think even in the feminist movement, we need intergenerational conversations for us to move forward in solidarity and with more intergenerational power. We've got a good question in here from Valerie Malay, who I know is one of our youth SDG champions, but she asks, how can we make sure that the global youth activism space is not just for the highly educated elite youth, but for all young people so that they can be part of the movement? You're just muted there. Yes, Valerie, spot on. It is an elitist space, closed space. We see the past decade the same networks, the same voices on and on and on. And I think it's really an individual decision that you make every day as a youth activist. So in my role as the youth envoy, what I try to do is to open the space for other young women to come in, to bring the most radical voices that would never have a platform with an AU commissioner or a diplomat or ambassador to actually say their grievances, to actually participate meaningfully. So that's one, really in our role as young activists to open the space for more youth, instead of you going to five different events, nominate 10 other people to do that. And then I think the second is not make these spaces extractive of youth agency.  You don't hear any feedback. You see the policy paper published after six months that has nothing that you have contributed to. And then you come back next year is the same recommendation and we are in this loop. And I think we need to change that. So in our work, when we invite young people to be on the table, great, that's a step forward. Now it's not a one-time engagement. You need to come back to young people and tell them what did we do with your contribution? What is your role now in the co-creation, in the execution, in the implementation? And I think that's where we can move away from tokenism, right? When we say you're ticking boxes with young people in these meetings and these engagements and actually meaningfully engaging young people. And I think this starts from both institutions and the youth themselves. We need to recognize that in the youth space as well, we cannot, we're all gonna get out of the youth bracket, right? We cannot take the space and make it just that network space. You need to start opening the space from now. So it's diverse, so it has many voices. And the more voices we have, the more diversity we have, we can deal with issues that we can't even anticipate. But that's the issue. People think that when we exclude people, it's easier, right? Because we can just say the same thing we said last time, do the same report and that's it. But if we make the space more diverse, people will bring up things we haven't thought about and issues that we have to deal with in the future anyway. So they will actually help us prevent and deal with futuristic thinking.  I really hope that this could be an approach for across public, private, civil society, activism spaces. We need to drastically open the space. I love that idea of diversity. Also linked to that, the thing you were talking about co-creation and the thing is that gets people nervous about co-creations. You never really quite know where it goes, but we should embrace that. You know, that often is where the creativity and change can really happen. There was a question here by the current Irish-UN youth delegate, Colin McCarrick, who was asking that similar thing, what advice you would give to him to get through to decision-makers. But perhaps a little bit more specific there, as you might know, Ireland is currently on the UN Security Council. That thing that you said earlier about that 40-year gap between youth and, dare I say, people sitting around that security council. But I would say Ireland, and in particular, Ambassador Branesan, who's heading the delegate there, has been massively championing this issue of women and girls and youth, I'd say in an extraordinary way. But what advice would you give to Ireland, to the youth of Ireland, to really get through at the Security Council in these very, very difficult times? Well, first congratulations on what Ireland have been able to do so far on the council. I think, first of all, really continue to push for youth briefers on the council. I mean, when I briefed the council, and even in my capacity as youth envoy, it was the first session on African youth, and I was the first to do that. So we are in 2021, right? It needs to be normal for young people to come and brief the council on every single issue, right? It's not when it's a youth session, then we call on the youth to brief. For everything, youth are the most affected, and youth have the right, it's their legitimate right to make decisions, to make proposals, to have solutions on the table. So think about it more as who is around the table? Where is the youth briefer? I think pushing for youth to be in the UN delegations is extremely important. Having a youth delegate is so important, and the youth delegates role to really then galvanize nationally that youth constituency and bring more voices to the UN system, to the council particularly is so important. Another thing I think is on the especially women peace security and youth peace and security agenda. As I said, I truly believe we need to move to development and not only security, but also young women are kind of lost. So young women in the youth peace and security agenda, they're like, so where is the issues that are concerned young women here in this resolution? And then young women in the women peace and security agenda, they're like, where are these the issue that are concerning young women in this agenda? It seems like it's an advantage to have a foot on both, but it's actually disadvantage because then your framework is lost within the broader framework. And I hope that Island can bring that up, the intersection of YPS and WPS for young women. What does it mean? And I met a lot of young women, especially in South Sudan who would say, when I am in the youth movement, it's male dominated and I don't feel my issues are brought to the table. And when I am in the women movement, the feminist movement, also it's dominated by other generations. And I don't feel that my issues are brought to the table. So young women and girls issues are always kind of lost in between different agendas, HR, SR, YPS, WPS, all these things, but it's not clear to us as young women, the particular very specific challenges we face in this age and time, how are we tackling them? And if we can bring that to the front, if we can do some framework working around it, if we can bring young women briefers to also propose, how do they see and the policy level on the implementation level, this agenda moving forward would be great. And of course, continue to host sessions on youth, that is extremely important because the council needs to be reminded more than one time there is a resolution on youth and they're mandated to implement it at the national level and we don't see much progress with national action plans. So lastly, on the question of how youth can get to these decision making tables, we as young people need to really knock all the doors. So reach out to your local council, reach out to your mayor's office, reach out to your parliamentarian representative, reach out to the government. We really have to knock all the doors, we really have to engage, we have to be consistent, we have to remind them every time that this is what they signed up for as treaties, as resolutions that we have the right to hold them accountable. So and to do that, we need to be in masses.  No, that's great. And I mean, I think it does kind of point out again, we've got to break down these silos that conversations happen in different spaces. And I do remember particularly around the security council, we've got to get some of these thematics into the country debates. And that means bringing the lived experience of people from those countries right to the table of the security council. But this question of silos does bring us back to the SDGs. And I know I've had several conversations with David Donahue on that. I mean, what was so powerful about it is trying to bring not only issues together but people together. There is then a question here from Leo Gill-Martin and specifically about what has to happen so that all young people embrace the SDGs, really make it part of their discourse. I will admit the SDGs as an acronym even isn't kind of that cool, although I know like I'm wearing the badge and that's kind of cool. But really, yeah, what needs to happen so that young people truly take this on that it's part of their dialogue as it were. I think the when needs to speak the language of young people. So it's not that young people are not advancing the SDGs. It's on every, if you look at every youth initiative, every young person working in the community, every young person engaging, they are advancing the SDGs already. They're just not calling it SDGs. They're not calling it SDG4 or SDG16. So I think instead of trying to make young people fit into the SDG agenda, speak the language of SDG, the UN needs to speak the language of young people. The UN needs to bring the SDGs and tell young people make out of it what you want to make out of it. Say it in your local language, say it in your own expression of art, say it in your own ways of organizing. And I think if we really manage to connect the issues that young people care about, that young people already are advancing in the community with the policy framework, then we can really shift from oh, young people are not owning the SDGs or not delivering the SDGs because they are already doing it. It's just the language framework that needs to change. And also the support and funding. I mean, honestly, we can't expect young people to volunteer for what 15 years, right? Since the MDGs, to deliver the SDGs, young people need resources, need support, need access, need platforms. So we need to institutionalize all these initiatives. It shouldn't be an ad hoc, okay? Let's bring youth in a community, talk about it, training on the SDGs. Okay, everyone know what SDG 15 and 16 is and that's it. No, we need to bring the resources to young people so it's a ripple effect. Those youth will then go to the community, make people more aware that this is a global agenda, this is what's happening and this is your right as a citizen of this country to have this delivery. So we need to have more, I would say, put money where our mouth is, like more action that is fully informed, fully funded, fully accountable. Then we can tell young people, then come to us after 10 years of doing that and tell us if the SDGs were not implemented because they will definitely be implemented. There is no other excuse. Already, if you look at youth around the world, they're doing it with the very limited resources. It's amazing that some young people with zero budget, even during the pandemic, some of the NGOs turned their offices into sensitizers, labs to make washing hands and with zero budget, with no resources, imagine if you give these innovation, the resources it needs, the supported needs, the language it understands what can happen. So I think it's a collaboration. It's not what youth can do, what the UN can do. It's actually let's sit together and let's have the language, the tools and the resources that we both agree on. Thanks, thanks. And I think that you brought up funding. In fact, we were in front of our Joint Foreign Affairs Committee today to talk about funding on ODA. And I think what was important is that we got huge support from our TDs today. They really do believe in that and they do get the funding. In fact, they went further to say, it's as much about long-term funding and particularly things for this when it's got to be transformative or when it's about getting participation, not only to be at the table, but to have the capacity and the time to really represent ideas. That takes time and it does take funding. So I think that's very important. And ODA, if I may, I just wanna say that it is really still a shame that only 7% of ODA funding goes to civil society organizations and the global south. So this strategy of ODA and where does the money go, it's we're not asking anymore of how much funding we need. Actually, with a little money, if it really goes to the people who are doing impact on the ground, it can deliver. But with a lot of money that we don't know where the rest of it goes to bureaucracy or to overhead or whatever it is, then we can't have impact. We can't have results. And it is civil society on the ground that really drives the results for ODA. So we really need to rethink the frameworks where we put government and civil society to collaborate on these ODA or traditional partners of civil society. There are huge organizations that really don't allow the young, small, youth-led organizations to also contribute and use that amount of funding to continue their work. It's something that not only one country, it's something that the whole international development need to sit down and really reframe how we look at ODA and where does the money go for civil society? Yeah, no, that's actually right. And you'll be glad to know again. I mean, it's a big topic of debate here, particularly amongst our own members. I know we've led a process, we're calling it reimagining the role of international NGOs and at the heart of that is that localization agenda. And I suppose it's really leading that thing back to this idea of co-creation and partnership. It's not an either-or, it's thought they've got more money than us. You've got to get back to that co-creation and at the heart of that has to be about trust and relationships, across borders, across age groups and all the rest. I'm afraid I think we have run out of time here and I do know these IIEA calls, it is the lunch break. So we do need to end at two o'clock. Sorry if I haven't got to all the questions, but just to assure you, I have lots of kind of really positive questions and people have been very inspired from what you have said today. I won't even try to sum it up, but I loved what you began with, those three issues of voice, power and solidarity. I'm also thrilled, as I think you said, as youth, yeah, the coolest generation. I'd like to think I'm still young, but I'd like to kind of, if you don't mind, if I can...  A bit cool, you know. But truly you have inspired me today, as I'm sure you have most people on this call. Next time we must get you to Dublin. Thank you very much for your words today. Thank you to the IIEA. Thanks to everybody for tuning in today. Yeah, and we'll look forward to seeing you again sometime, IA. Thank you very much indeed, everyone. Thank you, Suzanne. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.


So, before we dive really into the topic of architecture, the first question or the first thing to look at is the UML component diagram as one way of representing the architecture on a high level, very abstract. And what the UML component diagram is, it's a high level, whatever that means, it's a high level view of components, as the name suggests, and the interfaces. And now of course, one of the first questions you might ask yourself is what actually is a component. We talk about that a lot. And in general, what we say a component is, it's of course some kind of unit of composition. It's some kind of piece that you can use to compose your system. That's an easy way to say it. But another important aspect is that you should be able to deploy a component independently. So it should be a piece of your system that can be deployed, that can be started without the other parts of the system. It might not be fully functional because it might need other things to work as intended, but you can at least deploy it, you can start it. And that's of course, if you have a very complex system, that's a very desirable property, that you have a lot of components and they depend on each other, they require their services, but at least they can be deployed independently. For example, I could deploy one component on one computer and another one somewhere else. So this is in general what a component is. Furthermore, talking about the dependencies, a component has explicit dependencies to other components. And what that means is simply that you say, well, I have a component here and it requires other things to work. For example, I have an online shop and that's one component. I have written this online shop in whatever, in JavaScript and I deploy it on the web. It's independent so I can run it, no problem, but for it to work properly it requires another component, which is some kind of payment service. So you can shop, you can put things in your basket, but in order to actually be able to pay, this component requires explicitly another component that deals with the payment. And that one could be running somewhere else because it's also independent. So that's what a component is, what the overall idea is. And to represent this in UML, you basically use boxes for components. So you have a box, a rectangular thing and you write component in these angle brackets. So it's a stereotype component. This is a component. I can give this a name, for example, this might be my payment service. So this is the component that can handle payments. It has an interface to do so and we'll get there. And then I have another component. I'll just write comp here to keep it short. This is my web shop and this one is also independent. I can deploy it so I could put this on one machine, I can put this on another machine. And now these are the components, but we also need the interfaces here, the dependencies. And this is done, it's often done using the so-called lollipop notation and that's basically a line with this round circle at the end, so it looks a bit like a lollipop. And this means this service here is providing something. That's what this means. It provides some kind of functionality. And then we have the opposite, we have the notation that our service requires something. So this is how we typically represent an overall system, an overall architecture. You can say that in our case, we have two components. We have the web shop, we have the payment service. The web shop requires some kind of payment service and the component we have here is actually providing this functionality, it's offering it. This is often the preferred way of drawing this because it's very simple, so you can represent an entire system on an extremely basic diagram. But you can also go into detail, so you can basically unroll this and instead of this lollipop notation, you can draw an interface, which some of you might know from the class diagram in UML, so you can have a box with the stereotype interface. We call it, for example, I payment service. So this is our interface that provides some kind of payment service. And then as you do in UML with classes and interfaces, you can have methods. You can, for example, say there is a public method called make payment. And you could, of course, add all sorts of parameter and return values here. I skipped that. But essentially, instead of doing this very basic overview with a lollipop notation, you can also go into detail and really discuss how does the interface look like? What kind of methods do you have? What kind of parameters do they need? What do they return and so on? So that's the more detailed view. And of course, there is nothing that says that a component cannot have multiple provides or multiple requires. So the payment service could, for example, have another interface here that provides some other functionality. For example, for a bank to interact with it, or it could actually require something else. So that's also possible.  So this is what we would typically have in a UML component diagram. Of course, as it is with UML, there are many more details to this. So you can definitely go into depth and look at all the details if you want. But in many cases, if you look at software architecture, this is sort of the level that you'll see. Components provides and requires interfaces and if needed, details on how the interface looks like. OK, that was a quick overview of the UML component diagram. Now we really go into the topic of how do we actually do software architecture, what are the important things to look at.