Scaling Multistakeholder Partnerships: Connectivity and Education

Multi-Sector Partnerships Champion Digital Transformation in Education at Global Connectivity Session

In a dynamic session focused on the significance of multi-sector partnerships for enhancing connectivity and education, Ms. Karen Wilson moderated discussions that delved into the GIGA initiative’s role in achieving universal school connectivity by 2030. Mr. Jonas Pasquier, representing Switzerland, highlighted the initiative’s synergy with Swiss objectives, particularly in the context of Geneva’s historical expertise in connectivity and education. Emphasising the practical impact of the GIGA initiative, he pointed out its contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the importance of moving beyond discussions to concrete solutions.

The session underscored the pivotal role of multi-sector partnerships, which bring together governments, international organisations, NGOs, the private sector, science, and philanthropy, in driving educational transformation. Ms. Erin Chemery from UNESCO presented the Digital Transformation Collaborative (DTC) as an exemplary model of such partnerships. The DTC, involving around 30 to 40 partners, including Giga, ITU, UNICEF, Microsoft, Google, GP, and the World Bank, is committed to converging conversations around connectivity and learning outcomes. Ms. Chemery offered support for countries investing in connectivity and emphasised the long-term nature of digital transformation in education.

H.E. Ms. Marsha Caddle shared insights from Barbados’ transformative journey in education, advocating for a comprehensive approach that encompasses infrastructure, teacher training, curriculum development, and a focus on learning outcomes. She called for a whole-of-country approach to connectivity that extends beyond schools to students’ homes and communities, thereby fostering digital literacy across the entire population. Ms. Caddle also discussed the learning gap caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for the education system to adapt in order to recover from these losses.

Ms. Lia Glaz presented a case study from Brazil, where a coalition of foundations has been working to enhance teachers’ digital skills, leading to more effective use of technology in classrooms. She provided tangible outcomes of the initiative, such as a significant increase in teachers’ digital proficiency, and discussed the ongoing efforts to link improved digital skills with better learning outcomes.

The session concluded with a commitment to further collaboration and a specific proposal to launch a DTC in Barbados, leveraging the country’s pioneering efforts in education transformation. The speakers collectively emphasised the importance of a human-centred approach to digital transformation, ensuring that technology serves the needs of students and educators effectively.

Noteworthy observations from the session included the recognition of the need for systemic change in education, which goes beyond mere provision of technology, to include capacity building and the development of digital literacy. The panel also acknowledged the importance of measuring not just outputs but outcomes and impact, to ensure sustainable and meaningful integration of technology in education. The session highlighted the potential of digital transformation to benefit not only the education sector but also other areas such as health and trade, thereby contributing to broader societal development.

Ms. Karen Wilson:
session on scaling multi-sector partnerships, connectivity and education. We’re still awaiting one of our ministers but we’re going to get started because we only have a limited time and we have such a lot of great content to get through. So I’m Karen Wilson, I’m the moderator for this session and I wanted to start by introducing Jonas Pasquier who will give the opening remarks. Jonas is the Minister Counselor, Head of Global Affairs in FDFA. Jonas.

Mr. Jonas Pasquier:
Thank you so much Karen and I promise to be short also because you’ll hear much more expert voices than my own in this great panel. It’s my honour to open this discussion today on behalf of Switzerland. The summits happening this week in Geneva with this Plus20 AI for Good, they are about normative discussions but they’re also a lot about concrete solutions, direct impact and this is what we will discuss today, an initiative, GIGA, that is the perfect illustration of how we do things beyond just talking about how we should do them. This project is at, this initiative is at the juncture of two very important objectives for Switzerland but also for international Geneva which are mutually reinforcing connectivity and education. In Geneva these are two domains where there’s been a lot of expertise over the last decades. ITU has been here for over 160 years, really contributing to making Geneva an important digital hub and in the realm of education around UNICEF and also other developed. So seeing those two domains getting together through the GIGA initiative, this is really something positive and mutually reinforcing. Two more reasons why Switzerland and I personally also think GIGA is a particularly important initiative. First is through school connectivity is a direct contribution. Maybe you can cross-check almost all SDGs through this, not only because you’re actually addressing education and more inclusive education, but also because this has important reverberating effect, positive spillover effect for communities, for inclusivity, for gender equality, as we will also hear today. Also, the last but not the least of the SDGs, SDG 17, it’s about partnerships for development and for the SDGs. So this is really a perfect example of how to build new and concrete partnerships. And second, also as Switzerland, one important reason why GIGA is so important is that it’s, for us, one of our best Geneva story, if I can put it this way, not only because it’s focused on impact, impact on the ground, impact in partner countries. And we have really the honor of today to have a high level representative of partner countries to see really that things that are brewed in Geneva or are cooked in Geneva can also really help people on the ground. It is also when the way we think, the way to approach partnerships in Geneva, it’s not only that two international organizations work together, but that it also benefit from the expertise and cooperation from private sector, science, philanthropy, civil society. And this is, I think, in Geneva, you can find all of this. And one thing we like also. is a little bit the startup mentality. This is an initiative that keeps, I think, there’s a feedback loop of it’s a learning journey. It’s a learning process. You develop the models. You develop the solutions. As you go, also based a little bit this trial and error mentality. And this is what we, as Switzerland, as a host state in Geneva, wants to continue provide the best conditions for this a little bit innovative and see if I can put it this way, startup mentality. So without further ado, just a word of commitment on our side to remain engaged as host state, as member state, and as donor to make available the full potential of Geneva and its ecosystem. Not only Geneva as a geographic reality, but also as an approach for multi-stakeholder partnerships for connectivity and technological advances in education to the benefit of all. And this is exactly what the excellent panel lined up today will take us into. Thank you so much.

Ms. Karen Wilson:
Thank you so much, Jonas. And I would now like to invite Alex Wong to come up. And thank you, not only you, Jonas, but also the Swiss government for the support of GIGA. It’s been really important. And we’re really excited about the opening of the Geneva Center later this year. So let me first take you through briefly the run of show. We’ll have Alex Wong, who’s senior advisor in the executive office at ITU and a co-lead at GIGA, giving a short introduction to GIGA. And then we’re delighted to have Erin Chemery. She’s from the Digital Transformation Collaborative at UNESCO. She’s the senior partnerships and project finance officer. So we’re happy to have her here from Paris. And then we’ll launch into our panel. And we’re delighted to have Her Excellency Marsha Cadel, sorry, Cadel, wanting to put that French, and she’s a minister in the Ministry of Industry, Innovation, Science, and Technology. We also have with us online, Leah Glantz. Leah, hello. And- Hello, good morning. Good morning, and she’s president of Telefonica Vivo Foundation, and we’re awaiting the arrival of the Minister of Namibia, and I’ll introduce her when she arrives. So without further ado, Alex. Okay, we won’t do the video since the sound’s not working. Always happens, sorry about that. So thank you, Karen, Your Excellency.

Mr. Alex Wong:
Great to have you on the panel. UNESCO, which is a great partner on our journey here to connect every school, but the broader education transformation. So the video was meant to introduce Giga, but I’ll cover it orally or through the slides very quickly. I’ll keep it to five minutes, but that way all of you in the room get to understand what Giga is and how we’re actually doing that. So maybe if we can just go to the slides. First of all, Giga is an initiative that launched in 2019 with UNICEF. So we already think we’re unique that you have two UN agencies trying to work together, and UNESCO is a third. So we really wanna mobilize and leverage the UN platform for our member states, for the constituents here, because what we can provide at the UN, of course, is the impartial platform and our relationship with the governments. So for Giga, our mission, connect every school by 2030. to the internet, we really also have focused on making sure it’s recognized within the UN system and therefore at the political level as a key way to achieve universal connectivity. So we have references to the GIGA in the roadmap for digital cooperation in 2020, the transforming education summit, declaration for digital learning, and now in the global digital compact in the zero draft, I hope it stays. So Your Excellency, part of your job is to make sure GIGA doesn’t get removed in the iterations but it’s recognized in the zero draft as a key way to achieve universal connectivity. Next slide. So I can summarize what GIGA is in this one map. This is Panama, and basically the purpose of GIGA or the way we summarize it in one sentence is turn every dot green. So every dot on this map is a school. I’ll explain how we got those maps in a moment. And we are measuring the connectivity to the school, green, yellow, red. Green means 20 megabyte per second, which is quite low, but that is the definition that the ITU has given as the minimum level of meaningful connectivity to a school, 20 Mbps download. So we measure with the government and also using our own products whether that connectivity is green, yellow, or red. And our goal is to turn every dot green. Next slide. So our methodology then therefore starts with mapping the school. That’s actually the first thing we do with a country that we work in is we have an agreement with the country to share the data where the schools currently are located, but we complement that with the fact that we know many of the locations are inaccurate or is missing. So we use things like satellite imagery to measure from a photo. We know what a school looks like, and we try to then use that to map the school. We then use the modeling element, which means now we overlay where the current infrastructure is, where’s the fiber, where’s the towers, and we model what is the best connectivity solution and how much it will cost to connect that. Now we’re not going to actually do that ourselves. We don’t have the capacity or the resources. We work with government to give them that information, so that helps inform government on what are the right approaches and strategies and hopefully helps them with their negotiations as they plan out their own infrastructure. infrastructure strategy, their connectivity strategy as they talk to the solution providers. Number three and number four are really the new areas that we need to do more of. We’ve done some pilots, some tests, but the new Geneva Centre that was mentioned earlier, we’re really focused on building out our competencies in the financing area and the contracting area. So this idea of innovation and the startup, we’d like to think ourselves as a startup if there’s such a thing in the UN, which means we want to do things that might not work. So as an example on financing, we are working with the DFIs, the development finance community, to see how can we use more innovative financing and instruments to support school connectivity, but maybe tie that to education outcomes. Actually our colleagues from Brazil are here who have been doing some really amazing innovative things on school connectivity in Brazil using auctions from the spectrum, using universal service funds. Financing also means we’re playing around with something called connectivity credits. So we have a hypothesis that just like in climate change, you can trade carbon credits. Why can you not trade connectivity credits using blockchain to tokenize a gigabyte and put that on the market? I don’t know if that will work, but I kind of think it’s interesting. And under contracting, here’s where UNICEF, which is one of the world’s largest suppliers in education, I didn’t know that they are the world’s largest procurer of pencils, for example. And of course, UNICEF is behind the procurement of vaccines when Gavi began. So the UNICEF supply team thinks, why don’t we take connectivity and do the same approaches, which is about transparency, bulk purchasing, use the same procurement techniques that work in other commodities, can we apply that to connectivity? I don’t know if that will work either, but let’s try. So these financing and contracting tools and approaches is what we really want to build out in Geneva. And again, it’s all at the service for our members, our governments, to see how that can be applied in their country. Okay, next map shows that we’re currently active in 34 countries. We have some form of activity where Giga is active. That includes our ministers who are joining this panel. We are, of course, have a pipeline of countries who want to get more involved, and we’re discussing and we want to get to 50 sometime in the very near future, given the mission is to connect every school by 2030, but 50 is a goal for the next year or so. Next slide. So I’ll just touch on then the two centers or the center in Geneva that was mentioned by Jonas, but also our center in Barcelona, which only opened last year with the support of our Spanish government partners. So Barcelona is meant to be kind of like where all the tech people hang out. We actually had our first government exchange program last week, where we had representatives from the ministries in Botswana, Brozzania, Herzegovina, and Sierra Leone. They spent a week in Barcelona with the Giga data scientists, coders, product designers. And the whole point was to get those countries to understand some of the open source products that Giga is producing, and also get their ideas and get them involved to also co-create things. So we want to run the government exchange program at least two, three times a year, and bring delegations from the Giga country, representatives from the ministries of education, ministries of ICT, to spend time and learn and use the open source products that are being created. The Geneva Center that will open later on this year, as Jonas already mentioned, and as I already mentioned, not only will we focus on the financing and the contracting, but we’re also going to be building out what we’re calling the Giga Learning Hub. So we’re going to develop a whole set of curricula on school connectivity. We’re going to tie it to the ITU Academy, so it’s an actual core new set of activities on the ITU Academy platform, so it can be done virtually. We actually want to create a physical presence for the Learning Hub here in Geneva, and also use that as an opportunity to help build capacity with all the key stakeholders. And that will conclude my presentation. So again, the idea of using the dots, that’s your one takeaway I would ask for you to think about as you think about Giga. And of course, as Manos, who’s the director of the UNESCO Global Education, a monitoring report always says, that’s great, that’s an input, let’s focus on the outputs. That’s what really matters, right? That’s what we really need to focus on. So I’m proud to say we’re focusing on the input, on one piece of the input, but it’s going to be partnerships with UNESCO and others in this room where we can then also translate and focus on the output. So maybe that’s my introduction to the next, at least as a lead in for Aaron to pick up on. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Ms. Karen Wilson:
Thanks, Alex. And I can’t resist, since I do a lot of work on impact measurement and management. Just the outputs are not enough, Alex. We’re going to have to see the outcomes and the impact. So we’ll have to have more talks about that. Anyways, you see GECA as a really important collaborative between two large international organizations working with many other stakeholders, and very much, as Alex said, in the beginning, an entrepreneurial venture. And that’s why we have someone like Alex and his counterpart, Chris, at UNICEF in the lead. So thank you so much, Alex. So delighted, again, that we have Aaron here from UNESCO to talk about the very important work you’re doing there that UNESCO is doing, and how that ties in also with GECA. Please.

Ms. Erin Chemery:
Thanks so much, Karen. And thank you to ITU and GECA for hosting us today. I’m really loving the learning outcome piece, starting to filter into the conversation. So I think we are, as we work together, we’re converging the conversations. And I think that’s really important. Speaking from the education perspective, we’re off track on SDG4 to achieve quality access to education for all. Now, digital transformation and AI can help accelerate our progress. But we must adopt technology and connectivity on our terms, as the Global Education Monitoring Report put it last year. This means according to the principles of relevance, equity, scalability, and sustainability. The UN Secretary General was clear in his remarks at the Transforming Education Summit that digital transformation is failing to promote greater equity and inclusion, both within countries and also on the global scale. The biggest digital divides, of course, we all know impact low-income countries, rural communities, and the disadvantaged. To move towards sustainable, equitable use of digital technology and AI in education, we must move together in collaboration. And this coordination must happen at both the national and also the international levels. We need to move also from smart and sustainable pilot projects, and we saw a lot of those during COVID-19, to national scale analysis, planning, and resourcing, and financing for digital transformation plans. The Digital Transformation Collaborative, then, is the mechanism in education for that multi-stakeholder collaboration. And we’re taking that forward and co-creating it, really, with everyone around the table, with an equal voice and partners that contribute. it to that include Giga, ITU, UNICEF, Microsoft, Google, GP, and the World Bank. We’re about 30 to 40 partners that are sweating it out around the table together. GTC countries and partners have jointly developed a framework for digital transformation in education. This is a systems framework, so we’re looking at it from the system perspective, but we’ve had a lot of requests to build something at the school level as well, which I think will be really interesting to tie in as well to the Giga work. So we have coordination and leadership at the top, and this is how, you know, this is the vision and policies and shared goals that are critical to ensuring the human centered approach to digital transformation of education. This is how well are the ministries of education, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Communications working together for digital transformation. We also, of course, have connectivity and infrastructure, and we’re grateful to the leadership of Giga and ITU on this piece of the puzzle. Of course, we also have content and curriculum, and this also includes digital platforms. For capacity and culture, we know that digital transformation is all about people. It’s not about technology at the end of the day. So this is about equipping teachers and learners with the skills needed to ensure the sustainability of the investments in digital infrastructure that you’re making. Cost and sustainability, of course, is critical, and how are these initiatives being financed, how are they being built in as a longer-term plan to ensure the sustainable transformation is done at the national scale. And of course, feeding into all these is data, the data to know where you are along the journey. I think this slide is the core of our discussions today, because here you can see how various multi-stakeholder initiatives are coming together to lead on the various pieces of the system framework. You have Giga for connectivity of gateways to public digital learning that feeds into content and curriculum. We have artificial intelligence work that is feeding into the data piece, the data layer. And of course, the digital transformation is taking the coordination and leadership sort of mandate. There are DTC countries that can absolutely benefit from the work of Giga, and there are Giga countries that can benefit from all the other Cs of this framework to make their school connectivity more sustainable. When you invest in connectivity of schools, you also have to invest in your workforce, and the teachers, and the capacity building to make sure that they’re able to sustain that. those investments in their community. And my final point is, when you connect a school, we’re connecting a community, meaning that digital transformation of education benefits other sectors, such as health, trade, or others. And so beyond the work that we’re doing in connectivity education and finance, there’s potential benefits to other development sectors as well. So we can even make the party even bigger. Great. Thanks so much, Aaron, for really emphasizing and demonstrating the value and importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships. Also, the focus on the systems perspective is so critical. And I also love that you talked about the human or people centered approach. I don’t know how many people in the room remember, this dates me maybe, remember the one laptop per child initiative way back when. And that was a failure, unfortunately, because the laptops went to the schools and they were locked away in a closet because no one knew what to do with them.

Ms. Karen Wilson:
So it’s not enough to have the technology. How do you actually use it? How do you build the capacity and do all the other pieces that you talked about, Aaron? Thank you so much. OK, so now we will turn, Your Excellency, to the minister from Barbados. And so we see, as was mentioned, that there’s a need for system-wide transformation in education. How can broad-based coalitions across sectors, actors, and levels catalyze new approaches to education and its financing?

H.E. Ms. Marsha Caddle:
Thanks very much. It’s wonderful to be a part of this conversation. And I’ve been scribbling on my pad here and circling and underlining so many things that I’ve heard this morning, but also so many things that we have learned even prior. I want to start in the year 1997, speaking of dating ourselves, Karen. I was at. secondary school, and the current prime minister was the minister of education. And while she was minister of education, she started a program that much of the country thought was a little, I mean, I will admit, perhaps extremely futuristic. I’m wondering where she was going with this. And it was called Edutech, and that was decades ago. And Edutech, for Barbados, meant to deliver what we are trying to deliver here today. And I start there because it is clear to me that while countries like Barbados and Namibia and others are beneficiaries, I think we’re also pioneers, in that we saw this vision, and we longed for these partnerships that we’re seeing come to fruition now. So I first want to say thank you to GIGA, to ITU, to UNESCO. As I was coming here, the prime minister said to me, we have a history of really strong partnership with UNESCO, and we really need to kind of reignite that. And so that’s a part of my mandate as I’m here, so you get to hold me accountable to that. But it is a real pleasure to be able to see all of this come full circle from the Edutech days to now. Edutech was not as successful as it might have been. And you make a very important point, because the prime minister tells the story often of how she had to fight with the Ministry of Finance. I know she is the Minister of Finance. To be able to get the financing and to make case, and it is unthinkable that you would have to make this case to take students into the future of technology and connectivity and learning. She saw many years ago where it was going, and here we are today. But I’m really thrilled to be able to respond to the question of the need for system-wide transformation in education, because that’s where Barbados finds itself now. We’ve actually, since 2020. but really our mandate started in 2018, been in this process of education transformation. And it is every ball in the air at once when it comes to education. So it is really restructuring, quite frankly, a post-colonial system where it saw education being made available to certain students, certain people with certain means, and in some way that has cascaded down to a situation where there’s education available for all. But the system that we use to transition from the primary to the secondary level is still quite stratified, I would say. And we have these, what we call older secondary schools, and they’re older because literally they came from a place where only the landed gentry would be able to send their children to these schools. And then eventually we’ve changed the stratification to a certain kind of learner. So you go and you take an exam on one day, and if you’re a good exam taker in math and English, then you get to go to one of these schools. And if you learn in any other way, or if you woke up with a headache that day, then you are directed to another set of schools. When I was working with the prime minister seven years ago on what the education pathway might look like, I said to her, we have to make every school a top school, because that’s the language of Barbadians, right? She went to a top school. So I said, let’s make every school a top school, and we’ll know that by the learning outcomes on the other side. It won’t be about whether the school is in Bridgetown, or whether the school is an older school or existed for 300 years, but we’ll know that from the outcomes. And so what we’re trying to do now is to change that entire stratified system, literally, to be able to introduce primary, middle schools, where we focus a little bit more on building out some core capacities and competencies, and then go on to secondary schools that start at a later time, and infuse through all of that, from early childhood education, straight through to tertiary education, which is all paid for by government, to infuse that. use through all of that access to technology and to connectivity, but meaningful connectivity, to be able to say, well, what are students using this connectivity for? I also want to comment on something that I would encourage us, as Karen, you intimated earlier, to look at connecting schools, yes, but to look beyond that at connecting students. Because students occupy schools for part of the day. And really we want connectivity and the ease and the digital literacy to be taken from students with them from school into their homes and then to be transferred to their families. One of the things we find is that if you want families, parents, grandparents, children that are younger, to be able to adopt digital literacy as a language, then we need to use students who are of school age to take that home with them. We see the same thing with things like climate. We found that if we want to change behavior in terms of how people use energy efficiently or whether people litter or not, that if a child feels passionate about that message, they take that message home. And we see the change going not necessarily from parent to child, but on these newer issues from child to parent. And so for us, the connectivity is, school is very, very important because we know that some students will only get connectivity or will be introduced to connectivity when they get to school. But we want them to take it home with them. During COVID, we started an initiative in Barbados to put a tablet in the hands of every single student because we were quite frankly terrified of what the educational outcomes would look like on the other side of that. We’ve done some work and we see that what we expected has happened. Perhaps the outcomes were not as bad as they would have been if we hadn’t found a kind of a second best system to be able to deliver education remotely. But we realize that there is such a tremendous learning gap from those COVID years that our education system now has to pivot completely to be able to recover from those learning losses. And we are right now in our education transformation, trying to build in those learning losses into the curriculum that we are changing and evolving. The other thing, and I don’t know if Emma, my colleague from Namibia, will be able to make it today. But I’ve stolen a little piece of her question in case she doesn’t. And to say a little bit about what you frame as, and I really think that you all have framed these issues so well, and in your slide we see the interconnectivity, but what you framed as a whole-of-government approach to school connectivity. And we know that we need a whole-of-government approach, but I think we need a whole-of-country approach to school connectivity. Because what we’re working on now is that mapping that you talked about, Alex. We have a lot of data that supports that mapping. So for example, we know where every school is. I mean, Barbados has 270,000 people, so that’s not that difficult. I can point each of you in the direction of a school. We know where every school is. Each school has a building ID. Each school is identified according to its vulnerability, to hurricanes, to climate, to flooding, to other disasters. So we’ve done a lot of work to be able to do that mapping and do that mapping of fiberoptic cable as well, because Barbados has one of the highest penetrations and rollouts of fiberoptic cable. And so we’ve been working with the telecoms companies to say, look, this is a public-private third-sector partnership. We need all hands on deck for this. But there’s something else that I want to bring into this whole-of-country approach, which is, Jonas, you talked earlier about the startup mentality, and I think that you were talking about Giga having a startup mentality. But I think that we are trying to build out in our country a startup mentality when it comes to data and technology. We are building a data center, and we’ve just started the work to do that, because Barbados considers that data and technology have to be the new industry. I mean, it’s the new currency, and so it has to be the core of a new industry. But we’re doing that to be able to drive an ecosystem of startups and businesses that are able to use data to do research and development, but also to create data products. In order to do that, as soon as we start with formal education at three years old, which is when it starts in Barbados formally, and, well, we start at pre-primary as well, which is also something I’ll come to in the last 10 seconds. But what we realize is that we have to start that pipeline of talent from there. So really what we’re doing is building a startup mentality in the whole country. We’re trying to connect access to technology and meaningful connectivity to what will students do. We need to raise data scientists. We need to raise people who are curious about information. We need to raise people who are fearless about starting things and failing. And that requires not just a whole of government approach, but it requires a whole of country approach. Because we also need to teach parents that if your child fails at a project, that that’s just the first failure. And that’s fine. Barbados is a bit traditional in the sense that we like to pass exams. And that is, quite frankly, a part of the culture. And I think that this work is about being able to transform that alongside the education transformation that we’re doing. So Giga4Us is a dream realized. But we also want to be very active partners with you in showing some of the things that we’ve learned, in being able to share with our colleagues some of the things that we are already doing. And even up to the university, we think that we need to be able to have a certain level of technology transfer as well, so that people who are working on products can see a path to be able to convert these into a market, to have global penetration with their products, and to see how this works. So we’re really excited about the partnership going forward. We think that there’s so much that we can do. We think this is something that has energized the country, quite frankly. And we’re happy to see where it leads. Thank you.

Ms. Karen Wilson:
Thank you so much, Your Excellency. That’s a very powerful example of systems change at a country level, a lot of lessons learned, and a very powerful case study for other countries. So really important that other countries can learn from what you’re doing, and that you’re able to do in a country of that size, but also with the commitment and the leadership of yourself and your colleagues. So thank you for that. Also, you mentioned the learning gap of COVID years. That’s something that all countries are really wrestling with. And we can’t forget that group of students as they go through their lives and their careers. I think they’re going to continue to need additional support. And finally, I loved your point about it’s not just about the students, but it’s also about the parents. And then related to that is the broader community. Because by reaching the schools, you’re reaching the students, you’re reaching the parents, you’re reaching the communities. And that’s really systems change within the communities. So now we’re going to talk further about multi-stakeholder partnerships. So Lea, I’d like to turn to you. And if you could give us some examples and talk about how various stakeholders, including governments, international organizations, NGOs, and youth can be involved in driving forward this. uh, um, effort for educational transformation, Leah.

Ms. Lia Glaz:
Well, thank you so much. I just wanted to share my screen as well. So I can share a couple of slides. Um, good morning from Brazil to everybody. I wanted to start by thanking, um, every one of you for the invitation and also to say that I’m here on behalf of Telefónica Foundation and also Pro Futuro. We’re a part of Pro Futuro, which is a partner of DTC. Um, and I will bring to you an example, uh, of something that we’ve been doing in Brazil in the coalition that is called, um, tech education. If you give me just one sec so I can share my slides one time, one second. Um, there you go. So in Brazil, we’ve been working a partnership with a couple of foundations, private foundations, which are family foundations and also corporate foundations to leverage technology in a way that it’s equitable to all schools. Um, and, and that can make, uh, technology, uh, really something that is part of the day-to-day basis for every student. The, the scenario that we have in the country, can you still hear me? Oh my gosh. We hear you, Lea. It’s fine. Perfect. So the scenario that we have in the country is that infrastructure is still not available to every student. So only 5% of the schools, for instance, have, uh, adequate connectivity for pedagogical use. We have teachers that have a very low level of proficiency on digital skills. And also at the same time, a lot of public policies have been, uh, developed so we can actually make that available. So what this coalition is really doing. is looking to how we can have a framework in which we can work together with governments to first on a layer of viability and availability, which is what we call to really have infrastructure, training, and also the use of systems for things like students attendance, for instance. Once we have that guaranteed, we can actually work with things like digital education for learning and AI, and a much more qualified adoption of technology. And in order to do that work, we as a coalition have been working in three pillars in which one, which is infrastructure, which is led by an institution called Mega Edu, a partner of Giga actually on the ground. We have a second pillar in nature looking to teachers, principals, coordinators in every school with the basic digital literacy skills so they can actually use technology in a meaningful way in every classroom. And that’s where Telefónica Vivo Foundation has been dedicating all its efforts. And we have a third pillar, which really is aiming into bringing digital systems into every school board so that can be used in a meaningful way. So when you see, if you can see these three pillars here, what I will do now is just take a deep dive on one of the case studies that we’ve been developing, which is really how we’re working together with a local state to leverage digital skills for teachers. So in this case here, Telefónica Foundation has been working together with local government from a state called Mato Grosso on something that has been. been developed as a pact for digital education. The state with its local board of education has implemented a set of actions which is part of a broader public policy in which every single school has been granted with high-speed connectivity, digital devices, together with hybrid training path for every single teacher, grants for trainers in order to keep that approach sustainable over time, and so we can actually ensure that educational professionals have the availability to work with technology on a day-to-day basis. I don’t know if you were trying to change the slide. We’re still on the previous one, and also we don’t see you anymore. We hear you, but we don’t see you. Can you put your video back on? Yeah, it was on. And if there’s no other slide, you can take the slides down, and then we can see you even better. Well, I’m on the fifth slide. You can’t see it? Okay, and we’re getting to time, so maybe if you could speed up. Thank you. Thanks so much. Yeah, I was on my last slide. Okay, so maybe you didn’t see my full presentation, so can you see my slide now, which is the last one? Yes, now we do. Thanks so much. Okay, sorry. So what I was trying to explain is that we’ve been working with a state of Mato Grosso, which has about 20,000 teachers. In each, we have developed with them a policy, a public policy called the Pact for Digital Education. And we’re really focusing, after connecting every single school and providing them with digital devices, we worked with the government to provide every single teacher with digital literacy skills. skills based on their digital competencies. So every teacher was measured. We had about 25% of respondents in our digital skills assessment with a proficiency level that was considered adequate. And after a year, the result was that almost that over 50% of the teachers already had that digital proficiency to a level that was considered adequate. And the result of that was that we’re able to really, you know, start seeing a much more broader approach to the use of technology in the classrooms. And just to finish, what we see now is that we’re trying to really match now the learning outcomes with the digital skills of teachers to see if teachers that have better digital skills really have an impact on learning outcomes. So thank you. Sorry here for the problem in the presentation. If you couldn’t see everything, I’ll be happy to share with you later.

Ms. Karen Wilson:
Thank you so much. Yeah, that’d be great if we could share the slides after, but thank you for giving us some very practical examples also with very tangible outcomes and congratulations on the great work. So I know we started a little bit late. I know that we’re a little bit over and this is Switzerland, so we like to be on time. So apologies for that. But I would like to give our panelists and our two opening speakers a chance to just give a very brief one minute closing remark. So Your Excellency, if I could start with you, sort of your sort of key recommendation sort of that you would leave following the discussion today. Thank you. Thanks.

H.E. Ms. Marsha Caddle:
I think Leah’s presentation reminded me of our experience with COVID and the fact that teachers were so very invested in making sure learners had good outcomes, but themselves, did not have the adequate training, certainly had the will, but in some cases did not have the adequate training to be able to deliver that. And so just like Brazil has done, and just like is recommended from our partners in Giga, as part of our education transformation, and I would recommend to any country on this pathway, that teachers also have to be quite central in their capacity, not just to have digital skills, but to have the foundations that they need to deliver learning, right? Because what we find sometimes is that we put technology on top of systems that aren’t functioning well, and teachers need some basics in the classroom, and they also need digital skills. So I think that’s one of the lessons for us that I’d like to share. Great, thank you. Lea, your sort of closing thought. Thank you.

Ms. Lia Glaz:
So thank you for the opportunity. I think the only thing I would like to highlight is the importance of looking to technology, just like UNESCO has brought in their report. For us to have it on our own terms, you really need to equip people with the ability to really use technology in a meaningful way. So we usually look into devices and the more hardware approach, and our invitations here is that if we don’t know what to do with that technology, very hardly students will have the opportunity to have that really impacting their learning and their development in a digital society. So thank you.

Ms. Karen Wilson:
Thank you. That gets back to the human-centered approach that Erin mentioned in the beginning. Erin, your closing thoughts.

Ms. Erin Chemery:
Yeah, thanks so much. Three quick points. We need to keep these conversations converging. The fact that we are talking about learning outcomes now in relation to connectivity is already a huge progress from where we started a few years ago. So the more stakeholders we have around the table, the more those conversations are converged. So please, we need to keep broadening the partnerships as much as possible. Two, we have, in the DTC, we have capacity to support countries. So if you’re investing in connectivity, connectivity, connecting schools, we are with you, we are here to support you, so let’s take that forward. And three, digital transformation is a long game. These plans can go 10 years, 15 years, 20 years into the future. That’s politically a challenge. And so one thing that we try to do is break up that long-term plan into smaller, two times a year, four times a year, political, sort of an incremental wins. So it may seem overwhelming for this big transformation, but it’s possible to make it bite-size.

Ms. Karen Wilson:
Fantastic, thank you. Alex, you get the last word.

Mr. Alex Wong:
Okay, so sometimes there’s not a clear outcome from a session, but I do have a clear outcome, because we have the perfect leader here on stage. I was just saying to Erin, because Barberos is already a giga-country, Cleveland Thomas, our area ref, you must know Cleveland, everybody knows Cleveland. And also because DTC, we have the capacity to look at other countries, and because the Prime Minister is a broadband commissioner, so let’s use the BBCom platform to launch a DTC in Barberos, and let’s get focused on the outcomes. So that would be my closing remark, and I think that would be a great next step from this session.

Ms. Karen Wilson:
Fantastic. Well, thanks again to all of the speakers, thanks to all of you, and enjoy the rest of WSIS. Thank you. Thank you.