IGF 2017 WS #6 Collaborative Community Development Program Learn IG Promoting Youth on the Table

    Short Title
    IG Grassroots initiatives, Youth leaders on the table

    Proposer's Name: Mr. Shreedeep Rayamajhi
    Proposer's Organization: RayZnews
    Co-Proposer's Name: Ms. Sajina Karki
    Co-Proposer's Organization: Rayznews
    Co-Organizers:
    Mr Shreedeep Rayamajhi, Civil Society, Learn IG
    Ms Sajina Karki , Civil Society, Rayznews

    Additional Speakers

    Burna Santos – Civil Society-Brazil
    For the past three years I have worked as a legal advisor at the Presidency of Brazil, covering Human Rights and Internet Governance issues and taking part in interesting discussions on the Internet in Brazil in past years like the Marco Civil da Internet (Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet) and Data Protection bill draft. I am also an alumna of the Brazilian School of Internet Governance, a CGI.br fellow at the 9th Latin America and Caribbean Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Internet Governance Forum, an ICANN Fellow during ICANN58, and a very proud member of the Internet Society Special Interest Group Youth Observatory.

    Inspired by my Youth Observatory colleagues and as a young person who is interested in policy-making processes, building a safe online environment for young women is one of my highest priorities. Because of this, I joined the IGF's Best Practice Forum on Gender & Access as a voluntary investigator and co-authored the "Young Latin American Women Declaration: Enabling access to empower young women and build a feminist Internet Governance."

    Aris Ignacio Academics -Philipnes Aris Ignacio is the Dean of the College of Information Technology at Southville International School and Colleges, where he teaches different disciplines in Information Technology and Computer Science.

    He is also involved with ICANN through APRALO and ISOC. He is the President of the Internet Society's Philippines Chapter, as well as a member of the At-Large structure. He majorly involved with APrIGF youth IGF and other regional initiative.

     Maheeshwara Kirindigoda Private Sector SriLanka 
    Maheeshwara Kirindigoda is an Activist in the filed of ICT I am being privilege to hold the responsibilities as the Secretary to the Internet Society Sri Lanka chapter, President of the Chamber of ICT, Chairmen IGF Sri Lanka organizing committee and Secretary to the Central Province Export Chamber. He runs the internet saftey program in Sri Lanka and has been associated with organizing the Sri Lankan IGF. 

    Format

    Session Format: Panel - 90 Min

    Agenda

    During the workshop, we will be highlighting the personal experience, initiative and skills of youth for bridging the gaps of IG. We are also planning to highlight the problems with in the awareness campaign and youth involvement in the internet governance process and their role for future.
    The moderator will further make the session interactive  with questions and answers making the session more inclusion. Participants can ask their questions by raising their hand. 
    here are major agendas. 

    -Youth on the Table

    -Leadership opportunity for youth

    -Youth Participation in Internet Governance Process

    -Youth fellowship and scope

    -Youth Awareness and communication

    -Collaborative awareness concept

    -Awareness program and its sustainability

    -Funding option available

    -Indicators and players of IG

    -Role of fellowship and scholars

    We are keeping last 10 minutes to make sure we answer all the questions including online.  

    During the workshop we would be highlighting the personal experience, and need of technology in terms of youth awareness and how community collaborative project like Learn IG can helps in bridging the gaps. Most of the times People are awarded fellowship but when they go back they limit themselves to the limitation of their reach. This session will explore the possibility of how leaders can use their knowledge, learning and expertise to help others raise awareness specially with youth and community.

    The collaborative Community Development Program Learn Internet Governance Program is a Dynamic platform of getting information which focuses in open knowledge sharing method. During the IGF 2017 we want to share our experience and help promote the concept to further enlarge the group of internet leaders with the possibilities of what can be done at individual level. Especially in developing and least developed and developing nations where there is crisis of funding this concept can help people to network and do something credible in terms of spreading the awareness and knowledge that they have. They can use the available resources in utilizing their own knowledge and network to create a better means of communication channel that can empower the youths and share knowledge at local level without the support of any funding. It can further multiply and can be a very effecting means of capacity building as well. Right now with Learn IG, we have a simple website and forum for communication and collaboration. We are further planning to network and grow in terms of how and what can be done. This year we also published a report on Internet development status of developing countries in AP region. 

    We want to promote the concept of networking and knowledge sharing at individual level of youth internet leaders. Promoting and empowering youths as our basic objective. 

    As today in most parts of the world, it is very costly to participate in forums like IGF and other IG awareness course these kinds of informational tool can be handy for communication and information dissemination. Our main focus are: 

    1. To promote easy and effective mean of communication 
    2. To promote next generation leadership in developing countries 
    3. To build network among internet leaders 
    4. To create an open knowledge sharing platform 
    5. Utilization of local resources 
    6. Issues and challenges of Youth leadership in IG process 
    7. Communication and collaboration opportunity 
    I strongly believe today when there is a trend of people who are just traveling as a holiday to all these internet events where with Learn IG we want to make a point that things can be done with strong will and knowledge to make change it is possible and we youths believe in creating a better, safe and equal internet for all.

    Tag 1: Youth Engagement
    Tag 2: Access and Diversity
    Tag 3: Digital Literacy

    Interventions:

    An interactive dialogue with questions and answers with all the participating leaders and exchanging information in an open discussion.

    10 minutes –Introduction 
    Followed by open disuccsuion  Question and answer 

    we have selected all the speakers from a young group on the regional and on the basis of their work involvement with Internet governance issues. 
    We have asked them to prepare a presentation or any form of information that they can share it on the table. 

    Diversity:
    Confirmed Speakers 
    Shreedeep Rayamajhi – Media -Learn IG - Nepal
    Aris Ignacio-Academia - College of Information Technology – Philippines
    Maheeshwara Kirindigoda- Internet safety project – Private Sector -Sri Lanka
    David NG- eHelp Association – Technical – Hongkong 
    Burna Santos- Brazil 
    jianne.soriano-Net Mission 

    Online Participation:
    The online participation will be carried out by online moderator and we will be taking in LIVE question from the online particiaption as well as our participats present . 

    Discussion facilitation:
    As mentioned above we have clearly defined the topic and have circulated our speakers about the topic. we have also asked them to get their information as organized as possible. We are also working in bringing in case study specifically related to individual projects and further other details of collaboration and communication. Likewise, we will also be focusing on the real time data and internet penetration rate of countries just in case to give an idea about where the global internet is moving. It will give the discussion a new angle for discussion during the introduction session.

    Conducted a Workshop in IGF before?: No
    Link to Report: https://www.slideshare.net/ShreedeepRayamajhi/internet-development-repo…
    http://learninternetgovernance.blogspot.com/p/events.html

    Session Report (* deadline 9 January) - click on the ? symbol for instructions

    The session was started with a presentation on the survey that was conducted majorly among youths of various regions in understanding their challenges and issues of youth leadership and their efforts of voicing the issues.  
    The presentation highlighted the findings and the current gaps in between the perspectives of developed and developing nation’s youth.  
    The findings of the report are:

    • Youth Gaps
    • More Engagement needed
    • More Fellowship
    • Focused Coaching and mentoring programs
    • Next generation policy in Internet Organization
    • More collaboration from all sides
    • Diversity

    We highlighted the youth involvement in Internet governance processes, as they are the next generation of leaders and the most vulnerable group. The challenges faced by youth leadership in Internet governance are at times sidelined.  

    Especially, with the lack of proper guidelines youth suffer the consequences of nepotism and favoritism, internet politics and ultimately fail to understand the overall concept of the multistakeholder process.

    In this process of getting youth on the table there needs to be visibility and identification of youth related issues and further need to work on creating a bridge to create an understating in facilitating the process. Youth have to be reach in a more simplified and easy ways of identifying their commonality in creating that interest.

    A lot of issues were covered which primarily focused on the basic intervention of getting the youth on the table and their challenges. The issues that were discussed were:   
    1. Why youth should be involved?
    2. What should be the interventions?
    3. How can they start the IG process?

    One of the speaker highlighted the need to look at the abusive content, child pornography, inappropriate content, and safety of children and get support for funding initiatives and engage different stakeholders to tackle the problems of online child porn issues. Especially, talking about grassroots level initiative there is no funding for Internet governance initiatives. A lot of students in the Philippines are only concerned when the Internet is slow, and they have problems connecting to it. The issues have to be targeted in terms of their interest and concerned that can be an effective way of engagement.

    Likewise, issues were pointed out that Internet governance of itself is a hard subject. In Brazil, they are so proud of multistakeholders but it is hard to engage Brazilian youth in the subject itself. For example, a father would not be able to explain to his child how to use a mobile phone; they do not know how to restrict it. The generations ahead need to learn. It is important to let young people know that they are the main users of the Internet, and that they are expected to have years of experience in Internet governance.  Influencing youth and the general public on issues of Internet governance is a major challenge as is linking it to their daily life.

    Similarly, in most of the cases issues of e-government are associated with political issues, digital issues, and policies that the government bring forth, affect every individual’s life. Associating those with Internet governance helps a lot in terms of attracting interest from either the youth or the general public.

    One of the participants also highlighted that her peers are not interested in learning about Internet governance and cybersecurity.  She said that the Internet of Things is happening, and information is solved but people are choosing to overlook the breaches of privacy for the sake of continuing to use the devices and platforms we want.

    The session was closed by asking the audience to use capacity resources in starting up forums and blogs, and talking about Internet governance issues, starting not stopping whatever they can do to engage proper communication with in the community in collaboration and commitment for change.

     

     

    Reference link:  

    1. https://www.slideshare.net/ShreedeepRayamajhi/youth-on-the-table-survey-presentation
    2. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ahKM5zNWB6xgcYYBu1rLrtMWLdG9zdk3/view?usp=sharing