(Day 5) SDG Media Zone – 81st Session of the UN General Assembly

Good morning, excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues, and young leaders. On behalf of Public Foundation and our partners, welcome to Transforming Global Education, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Youth.

When we gathered here.

At the United Nations in May for the Transforming Global Education Summit, we began with a clear premise. Education transformation cannot stop at the classroom. It must connect learning to opportunity, technology to inclusion, and national ambition to the realities that young people face. Today, we continue that work. This morning is about bringing all of our stakeholders together. Sorry. And we're asking how promising approaches become systems, how pilots reach scale, and how education can respond to economies and labor markets that are changing faster than ever. Our program is built on three essential pillars. One, innovation. not simply new technology, but better ways to expand access, strengthen resilience, and support learning. Two, entrepreneurship, equipping young people not only to find opportunities, but to create them.

And three, entrepreneurship.

Sorry, three, and youth, recognizing young people not as beneficiaries waiting at the end of the process, but as partners in designing the future of education. And if you look around the room, you will see that our youth partners are here today. As we listen to this morning session, I invite you to keep one question in mind. How do we ensure that transformation reaches the learner, not only in the institution or the system? So once again, on behalf of Public and our partners, thank you for joining us. Let us begin. We will start with our first panel, introducing the RAIN Hubs, Scaling Regenerative Economies. We begin by looking at the connection between education, entrepreneurship, and regenerative economies, and how local systems can turn knowledge and innovation into livelihoods. It is my pleasure to welcome our moderator for that session, Samira Saim of Conde Nast Mexico. Samira.

Thank you. Well, it's a pleasure to be here today to talk about a new generation of entrepreneurs that are thinking or rethinking fashion through circularity, innovation, and nature-based solutions. At the center of these conversations are the RainHubs, a regional platform supporting entrepreneurs and strengthening innovation ecosystems across Latin America. I am very pleased to be joined by two people that have been instrumental in building and advancing this initiative, Kerry Vanigan, President of the Board of Public Foundation, and Steven Keppel, President of Public. Foundation. Okay, thank you both for joining us. Let's start. Stephen, RAIN stands for Resilience, Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Nature. Could you please explain what RAIN Hubs is, how does it work, and what makes it different from a traditional accelerator?

Sure, and I think it's important to start with the objective of RAIN Hubs, which are to increase the pipeline of investable solutions, right? It started with a problem and a challenge in Mexico City five or six years ago and has evolved to become, yeah, a series of hubs right now in five countries in Latin America that basically are a you know, an environmental and nature-based layer on top of existing innovation systems. So we work with universities in these five countries, and the goal is to identify those entrepreneurs that are coming up with the solutions of the future that are gonna be good for the planet, but they're also gonna be good for the communities that people live in.

Great. Okay, Kerry and Stephen, I have a question for both of you. Since 2019, RAIN and its ecosystem partners have supported more than 1,200 entrepreneurs. and mobilize over $23 million in capital. Can you share one or two concrete examples of entrepreneurs or startups that reflect the impact of these ecosystems? And beyond numbers, what kind of transformation have you seen in the communities or regions where these entrepreneurs work?

Sure, I'll start with that one. And first, I'll say We're really proud that the RainHubs network has engaged more than 1,200 entrepreneurs and mobilized more than $23 million in investment, which is just a start, but we're proud of that for sure. And the success story that I have been talking about all week and that we're really inspired by is a company based out of Colombia called Techlogy. And Techlogi is focused on AI logistics. And it seems like, okay, what does that have to do with the environment and sustainability? But their technology allows truckers throughout Colombia and transportation companies across the region to better understand what's in their trucks, right, what's, so they have fewer empty trucks, fewer, you know, and they're reducing the size, they're reducing the fuel that they use, and it's spreading, you know, very quickly. They had, in the first half of this year, $20 million in sales. And it shows really how to go, you know, our model that goes from hub to growth to capital. So they're coming up for Series A. They're going to be one of the companies that we're helping to identify with financing to really scale and grow, not just in Latin America, but hopefully throughout the region around the world.

I'd like to add to that. One example is Greenleaf Natural Fibers in Colombia. and Greenleaf transforms pineapple leaves into plant-based fibers that can then be used across fashion, construction, textile, and design. And while I want to give this example, it's because it goes well beyond just the fiber itself. This is a venture that is working directly with the community. So they're working with the pineapple producers and rural women. And what this shows is an example to not only is this a business that's providing sustainable solutions for a sector, but how it's also providing additional income opportunities for those in the community, whilst also then lowering agriculture waste and it's protecting the soil. And I think Greenleaf truly does demonstrate what the RAIN Hubs is there to enable, how you can take a regional environmental challenge, work within the community and turn it into a viable business. And to also echo what Stephen was saying earlier with the statistics that are shared, the whole point of Rain Hubs was really at the beginning to help put into practice sustainable solutions for local communities. But now, as an example of Stephen sharing there also, is this as businesses that we then, once they get through the accelerator and the incubator phase, and then work with the investor pipeline, is to become global solutions.

Amazing, amazing. Okay, Steven, Reign is now operating across multiple countries, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Peru, and El Salvador. Why was Latin America the right place to build this model, and what opportunities do you see in the region for universities, and maybe also regenerative fashion innovation?

Sure, I'll start in with why Latin America. One, that's where the conversation began for us, but Public Foundation has had strong links to the region since its founding. We host an annual summit here at the UN focused on impact in the whole Ibero-American region, and so it felt really natural. Another reason is, We have an amazing partner, Clean Tech Hubs, which is based in Colombia, and they have been really able to help us expand throughout the region. And so without them, this work wouldn't be possible, and they've been an amazing partner. And then I think lastly, there is a hunger and desire in the region to come up with solutions, environmental solutions, nature-based solutions. And we're just kind of a vehicle to help source that and connect it to the capital that's out there and to some of these hubs. And then I guess, finally as well, I don't want to leave out the universities. There's some really strong universities in the region, and that has been a key part of RainHubs, is connecting with a strong anchor academic institution in each country. And they've gone above and beyond in supporting us and making this a really impactful program.

Great. I love the idea of the ecosystem. Carrie, okay, this is very exciting, no? Because today we are formally introducing the FIBRA program. It stands for Fashion Impact Business Regenerative Accelerator. That's an expansion within the RainHubs. These will shape the new generation of circular fashion innovators within REIHN. Tell us more about it.

Thank you. So this is actually an expansion built on the success of the REIHN hubs of what we've seen over the last six years. And our partners at Cleantech Hub have definitely seen in the pipeline that there are businesses there that speak to the fashion industry from packaging to materials and so forth. They started focusing on maybe food and agriculture, but now Clean Tech Hubs, along with the support from Public, is really excited to expand for those already in the RAIN pipeline, how they can go into a more focused accelerator. And so the FIBRA program is really going to focus on circular design, textile innovation, as well as also artisan heritage. And with that, it's going to be a 16-week acceleration cohort across four tracks, where the ventures can choose between circular fashion, textile innovation, artisan heritage, and supply chain transparency. And really then expanding on what they have already learned within the rain hubs, this will be a much more intensive program, connecting them further with mentorship, the technical expertise, partnerships, but really then getting them ready into the investor pipeline. And this again is to show what can happen when you put that focus on a regionally, see what works, the lessons learned, best practices and then look to scale that out. So the entrepreneurs that already exist in the RAIN hubs today are extremely excited to maybe to have that more sector driven and focused experience and education to take them to the next stage to scale their businesses.

Amazing, Kerry, congratulations on that initiative. Thank you very much. Okay, just to finish for both of you, let's talk about the future. Looking ahead, what is the ambition for RainHubs for you two? And how do you envision scaling this model across Latin America and beyond? And what would success look like for the next generations of entrepreneurs?

Yeah, from my perspective, success over the next few years is increasing this pipeline and actually getting more investments, series A funding rounds, more technologies, 5, 10 multiples. And then also, there's no reason why we can't have a Rain Hub in every country in Latin America and beyond. We've already had conversations with partners in Africa and Asia. The model is built to expand. It's interoperable. It's not designed to duplicate anything. It builds on top of things. So I think the sky's the limit. I'm sure there are partners in this room and those that are watching that can help us realize that vision, and that's what we're excited for in the future.

To add to that as well, I think RAIN has always been designed to be the blueprint, not a pilot, and how we can then take that and scale that, but with the understanding that it's adaptable to the community in the region that it lands in, how it makes sense for the communities that are involved, what does it look like for the entrepreneurs, but also the local challenges that these innovators are trying to solve. And so expanding That is also the importance of it sustaining itself, and that's thanks to the partners taking this from the beginning, the ideation, what does it look like for these entrepreneurs and innovators, with the biggest focus then being investment ready in the pipeline.

Amazing. Amazing. Thank you very much for talking to us, and thank you very much again.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Amira, Kerry, and Steven.

We now move from the broader enabling ecosystem to one practical frontier, how regenerative agriculture can support energy resilience, economic opportunity, and stronger communities. Let me welcome Mike, Alex, and Kat to the stage.

Thank you. So I'm joined here today with Cat Taylor from the Tomcat Ranch Educational Foundation and Alex Cornell-Duho from the Elected Officials Protecting the Earth. Thank you, Cat and Alex. want to start with something the energy conversation almost always gets wrong. We talk about fuel, energy, security, food security as two separate problems. They're not two problems. They're one problem told twice. The fuel that moves our global economy and the fertilizer that feeds it are drawn from the same source, the same wells, the same pipelines, and the same ports. So the question for the next 15 minutes is a simple one. What does it look like to produce domestic fuel, energy, and fertilizer from the same working acre? With a co-product that rebuilds topsoil, how can US regenerative agriculture policy and renewable fuel policy serve as a framework for any member state to help lessen our collective reliance on foreign fossil fuels? Alex, I'd like to start with you.

Thank you, Mike, and thank you, the public and everyone who's brought us here today.

I'll start with a quick.

Example of how dependent we are and the interconnection between fossil fuels and how it's a national security risk to our farms.

When I was in the Marine Corps, deployed out to Iraq, I came across a line of cars, tractors, and trucks, literally as far as the eye could see. And it was dusk, so you couldn't really see what they were waiting for.

So we decided to go to the front and found out they were lined up for fuel, for diesel, for their tractors, and gasoline for their cars.

But we had a curfew and our job was to break them up.

Unfortunately, they were willing to risk their lives before this single source of fuel. And it really struck me. Many years later and time and time again, that fuel source that includes the fertilizer that's going through these choke.

Points across the world.

The Strait of Hormuz is.

Getting a good chunk of the attention today, but the Bab el-Mandeb across the--in the Red Sea is also a huge problem. And then the Strait of Malacca, and for better or worse, I've been through most of these straits between the State Department and the military, that takes 30% of the fuel in the world. And so when we have a situation where 40% of the global trade is energy, our dependence on these choke points is a security risk to the farms and the farmers growing our food and our food security. So as a result, we have opportunities here to have energy that is homegrown, which is the most exciting part of this. And because the reality is the US can never be energy secure by ourselves because what we.

Refine is not what we produce.

It has to go into the global market. And when we have a world where three quarters of the planet is dependent on importing fossil fuels, the opportunity though is to switch that where 92% of the countries have 10 times the renewable energy capacity than they need. And how that manifests in the U.S. for our own energy security and the security of our food systems is the renewable fuel standard, which is how Mike's going to talk a little bit more about that, because what it essentially does, it gives the sovereignty of the fuel and the energy and the fertilizer back to our farmers so they can control their future and they're able to build healthy, organic, nutritious food here.

So, Mike, I'd love to pass it out.

To you to talk a little bit about the fuel standard and how that makes us more secure.

Thanks, Alex. And bear with me on a, we're going to run through a couple of years of U.S. biofuel policy as quickly as we can. So the renewable fuel standard, it was passed in 2005 and expanded in 2007 to be technology neutral, covering liquid, gaseous, electric, renewable biofuels, like organic waste to biogas. It was written to displace reliance on sources of foreign fossil fuels, to advance domestic low carbon biofuel production, and to support rural communities. Today, when EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, sets annual volumes, Congress requires it to weigh six factors: energy security, environmental impact, U.S. infrastructure, consumer fuel cost, rural jobs, and our food supply. The RFS is not an environmental statute. It's a national resilience statute with an environmental co-benefit. 2026 is really an inflection point because for the first time, US policy aligns. The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, USDA's recent Regenerative Agriculture Feedstock Rule, which Kat will talk and expand on a little bit later, and an executive order advancing regenerative agriculture and farm resilience. Together, they establish a framework and a defensible way to prove that regenerative agriculture as a practice can actually support a biofuel and domestic fuels market. For the first time, a resilience statute, an executive order, and a regenerative feedstock rule are all pointing to the same direction. That is rare alignment. Cat, the word regenerative have done a lot of work in this decade, and to be honest, not always honest work. We've talked about markets and policy, but let's define the term regenerative. clearly at the field level. Tell us what it actually looks like on a working acre.

Thanks, Mike. Thanks for this opportunity to be here. And I'll probably start by immediately defying instructions. But I want to step back for a minute because those for, especially those of us not directly involved in agriculture, we forget that agriculture is the dominant way we tend our earthly home. And because of our human cleverness, We steward for better or for worse on behalf of many other flora and fauna kingdoms as well. We harness these natural energy systems to make our human world, including the built environment, textiles, fuel, and food. And after all, food is our fuel. I struggle with trying to get agriculture back into the frame of energy systems. It is probably the biggest energy system that we have, and it really matters how we tend to it. An economy, which means management of the home in Greek, does the best when running like an ecology, but we have stepped away from those natural laws at our peril. We can step back. An ecology that recognizes the ongoing energy of the Big Bang, where now gravity is not pulling us down, but together. The laws of sacred geometry and quantum physics, and the mutualism that lies at the heart of all thriving. We are a part of nature, not apart from nature. We have a human mindset desire to define things like regenerative agriculture, but it defies definition by its very nature. It's not prescriptive, it's principled and is founded on healthy living soil systems. To sort of at least give you the principles of regenerative ag, here they are. First and foremost, you consider context, which is why it's hard to make it prescriptive or definitionally based. After that, you strive for no or minimal bare soil, long rooted perennial plants to maximize biodiversity above and below the ground, to foster high quality water and long storage, to eschew off farm inputs, especially chemical and debt types, and to reintegrate livestock. This is really us participating with nature in the incredibly powerful alchemy of photosynthesis, which is honestly the only thing in life that makes something out of almost nothing. Therefore, lacking the ability to ascribe a definition of regenerative agriculture, we prefer actually to define it by its outcomes. And its outcomes are things like healthy human food products, a restored rural economic resiliency and viability, the protection of biodiversity across the world, and the redistribution of power to people and our ecologies. It's actually a back to the future idea. For probably 100,000 years, we've been practicing regenerative agriculture. The longest standing civilizations on the planet knew it well and observed it carefully. And we used to say, I don't prefer this term, subsistence farming. It seems demeaning to me, but it is regenerative farming, essentially. And 70% of the world until very recently provided for themselves by their own farming. Of course, a decentralized autonomous network system like that is harder to scale, but not impossible to scale. It scales through aggregation, coordination, and collaboration, and it can achieve scale economies doing so. There are some things in its way at the moment, and I need to just say the opportunity to restructure farm credit in the United States is a huge way to unleash regenerative agriculture back to our roots. Right now, $600 billion of farm credit is let out annually on a three to five-year recapture. You don't finance a permanent earning asset called soil on short-term credit. You wouldn't even do that with a house. If you simply stretch farm credit out to 20-year money, you allow a farmer to quit the two or three jobs off-site that they need to get benefits and adequate income and walk the land again, which is the first principle, consider context. You allow them to build equity in their business because a farm is first and foremost a business. You allow them to get off of the chemical cocktail that's making them, the land, and their neighbors sick. You allow them to invest in innovation, going back where they know they came from. A lot of farmers have deep ancestral wisdom about how farming actually works. And you allow their children or new entrant farmers to see an appealing business opportunity to succeed into. That scales because it simply restores the unit economics of farming and ranching in America. And livelihood businesses are the only things that scale in a market economy. You don't actually need government subsidy. You need the pernicious types to get out of the way. But farmers can self finance what they need to invest in to achieve that kind of a viable economics. It's also better for politics, honestly, to have decentralized autonomous network organizations. It restores the power of farmers and ranchers worldwide to have ample provisions for themselves, their families, and their operations, to have self-determination and dignity. All life self-organizes into networks, all life is intelligent, all life is creative, all life regenerates.

Thank you, Cat. Thank you, Cat. That's such a vision. And, you know, today we started with the recognition that we have one energy security problem told twice. Our fuel and fertilizer are drawn from a single source that runs through some of the most exposed geographies on the planet. Alex has given us the context, Kat, you've given us the working acre, and the US framework already exists. Now we just need an active producer first, organic waste to electricity pathway to help support our grid infrastructure and unlock precision agriculture as well. So what's next for the groundswell in regenerative agriculture? It may be the key to building both our soil and lessening our reliance on foreign fossil fuels. Thank you.

Thank you, Mike, Alex, and Kat. We now move to the transition to building the operating system for global education. And of course, transformation Transforming education at scale requires more than individual programs. It requires a shared infrastructure that connects learners, institutions, credentials, and opportunities. To introduce Education OS, please welcome Chris, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the Learning Economy Foundation. Chris, over to you.

Hello. So it's a pleasure to be here again. You know, we, I want to start by talking about infrastructure. You know, we think about infrastructure as roads and bridges, but really education in our minds should be infrastructure. You know, this, it's, When you think about the sustainable development goals, it's education which enables the rest. And if we can solve for education, we can solve for poverty, we can solve for jobs, we can solve for many of the others. And so three years ago here with Public, we began what's called the Transforming Global Education Platform. This platform began as a way to bring together stakeholders to start to look towards public good infrastructure, which can enable such a thing as education for all. And since then, we've had great success. In the first years, we raised $20 million, which we're just getting started. After that, we began to build the public good, which I'm excited to show you in just a bit. We have developed that. Since then, we also launched what's called the Transforming Global Education Summit, which is an annual summit that happens here inside the UN. And last May, we gathered more than 20 countries and 500 stakeholders from around the world to start to really talk about education as infrastructure. And I admit it was incredibly exciting because this is a conversation that even five years ago, three years ago, it was just unheard of. No one could get their head around it. And today we find ourselves in a space where each of these countries, developing and Western, are saying, this is exactly what we need to advance our education agendas. So it's incredibly exciting. And you know, since then, this was in May, we've already raised another 7 million. And like I said, we're just getting started. So I'd love to formally introduce what we call the Education OS Public Good Platform. And if we can play the video. So what you see here is an operating system. You know, when we begin to think about education as an operating system. It's a way for us to come in as a nation or as a district and start to organize our ecosystems, right? So you can see, you can build these out with hierarchies, which enable us to transfer both permissions and data up and down a hierarchy, which is really important for us to manage how our applications, how our data flows, how our credentials can be managed. And from there, you begin to install plugins. You know, you can think of it like a normal operating system, so you're installing apps in which the users can engage with, whether those are AI, they're engagement tools, learning tools. And then you can install passports and digital wallets to allow those learners to actually store their lifelong credentials. And then you can start to install really tough things like infrastructure and data standards, you know, hosting. At the end of the day, the idea here is it's not one-size-fits-all, it's everyone picks their own system and it empowers their nation to essentially enable the tools that they want into each of their well, their local governments and their high schools and colleges. And the same is true with integrations. So these are like your learning management systems and your student information systems, your data sources, and then trust registries and skills registries. So the idea here is all of the pieces you need to have a truly comprehensive education experience are available here and growing. And if you don't have the tool here, well, you can add the tools locally. And so the idea here, you can cut the video, but the idea here is to enable on the nation, on the district, on the state level of each of them to take whatever they need, to put it together and to actually create a scalable infrastructure where education is enabling the rest of the national agenda. And so I'm really excited to announce a panel, which actually, I guess I'll turn it over to others to announce the panel, but I'm really excited about the next panel, which is which is bringing together my colleagues and some nations to talk about the Transforming Global Education platform. Thank you.

Thank you, Chris. We now invite Stuart Smith, and Stuart is the CEO of NCUK. And Stuart is going to tell us a bit more of his very innovative idea of bringing in the curricula when we speak about transforming global education. Stuart.

Can you hear me? Hi, everyone. My name is Stuart Smith and I'm the CEO of NCUK. I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we do in a few minutes, but first of all, I'd just like to say a massive thank you to Public for having us here today and it's great to be part of the Transforming Education Programme. So I'm going to try and, so What NCUK has been around for more than 25 years and we've been supporting young people around the world access high quality education, world leading universities, and that's something we're incredibly proud of. What we do and have developed is an international standard curriculum. There's quality assured by some of the best universities in the world. But what we really focus on is bringing that to people's home countries. leading with localisation and adaptation of our programme, so it accelerates learning. And the idea is that you can do our programme within one year and be able to access some of the best universities in the world. What we really do is also focus on training the trainers, supporting teachers to be able to deliver our qualification in a way that enables future generations to continue to learn and take on our curriculum. The result is that students get a globally portable academic credential that they can use for access. So, I've gone a bit too far forwards there, but we'll make it work. So our curriculum has over 6000 subject pathways that students can can use. They do a mixture of language skills and critical communication skills which you need for education, but also into a global work environment. And what we also do. have our study skills module as well that provides a diagnostic of a skills gap a student has from the curriculum they've been studying and the curriculum that they're going into. And we use that module to really focus on bridging that gap. And again, what we focus on is trying to have our standard curriculum, but create specific learner journeys that students will find useful and transformational in terms of their studies. In terms of what this slide demonstrates, this is where we've got a presence currently and we've got learners all around the world. And what we're really proud of is that students start our program, 98% of those students go on to complete an international degree. So we know that it works and we know that they do very well. And you can see that by their results that 89% get A2, 1 or a first, which is a very high standard. So just to close, What do we do and what do we provide? And we'll be providing as part of the global education program, we'll be providing skills development for students and teachers at home. We develop our train the trainers program so we can keep that generational training happening and keep access happening. credentials that students can use for work and future studies wherever they want to go in the world or from home. And we bring international universities to an individual's country, something we're incredibly passionate about and something we're really proud to bring to the program.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Stuart. We now move to Transition to the national blueprint. We're now looking at global access to national transformation. What does it take to move toward and move beyond individual programs to now build an education system that connects learning to livelihoods, technology, and national development? And to speak to more of that, we have Alison Bryant, the Chief Operating Officer from Learning Economy. We have Dr. Bernard Doro, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction from the Republic of Nigeria. And we have Honorable Suvaki Lavamu, Minister of Finance from the Kingdom of Tonga. Invite them to come forward.

Good morning. I'm incredibly excited with this panel. These are some of the best thinkers, I think, in this space. And we spent a lot of time this week and also this morning talking about the building blocks of education. And so now we're gonna take just a few minutes, we have a short amount of time, to zoom out a little bit and talk about what does it mean to do this at a national scale and to move from innovation and pilots and pieces of the puzzle into sustainable and scalable solutions. So I'm gonna start with you, Dr. Doro, because Nigeria is such an interesting case study when it comes to this, because you have education, livelihoods, and poverty reduction so closely connected, and certainly in the work that you are doing as well. So when you think about education from the perspective of poverty reduction and graduation, as I know you like to talk about it, what has to change for education to translate more reliably into real economic opportunity for young people and families, and what would success look like?

Thank you so much. To graduate people out of poverty, obviously I'm Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, so I see education within a context of graduating people out of poverty because to graduate people out of poverty, you need to provide them with skills and the skills is you receive a skill or get a skill through education. Now for For educating young people or what I would like to see change in educating young people is first of all to ensure that whatever education we are providing to young people, start with a need assessment. It has to be something that interests the young people in the first place. Because if you identify what interests them, then you are able to tailor your education to their needs and also get their buy-in. Now, secondly, it has to be something flexible. And that is why the launch of, uh, education, uh, OS is very, very important because you need to deliver that in a way, uh, that is flexible through technology so that, uh, young people can be able to engage with it. And lastly, it has to be something that an education that does not only lead to certification, as I will always say, it has to lead to some form of economic activation. And when you look at getting people out of poverty, you must train them in a way that lead to economic productivity. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, absolutely. So, Ms. Slaven, I'm gonna talk to you, or we'd like to hear from you next, because Tonga is a very interesting contrast to Nigeria. Obviously, we're talking about smaller systems, which can have different types of constraints and barriers and challenges, but also can sometimes move more quickly and have some real opportunity there. So from Tonga's perspective, what does education transformation need to accomplish for young people to fully in a rapidly changing global economy while still meeting your country's priorities? And what kind of barriers do you feel like and opportunities are unique to small island developing states? Thank you, Alice.

And firstly, we're proud of Tonga being one of the co-hosts for the Education Summit earlier in May. It's been giving us great opportunities.

As a finance minister, education is the largest part of my budget.

So I have a particular interest in getting the most social and economic value out of taxpayers' funds. With the three, I see this three points that I want to highlight, Alison, in terms of.

The challenges that we face, but also opportunities as one. Transformation education for Tonga means equitable access to quality education, regardless of the geography of the country.

Ronga has a land mass of about 700 square kilometers, but it's spread across 700,000 square kilometers in the ocean. So it's quite a challenge in terms of getting dispersed education across. And it's been, for me, it's looking at transformation that a child, whichever island they're from, should still be able to get the quality access regardless of their geography. So digital education is obviously one of the tools that we want to pursue second.

Is the clear pathway from the skills that are being taught to employment. The IMF has already identified that there's a mismatch in things that we're taught in classrooms.

And what are the employable skills that are in the labor market. So that's something that we want to see being overcome as well.

The last point is our Tongan values.

Now, in a very interconnected world, it's very easy to lose your identity in some of these things.

So for us, while you're being globally accredited to all these beautiful qualifications out there.

We don't want to lose that.

And we want our children to be firmly grounded in our Tongan values.

So in summary, it's getting equitable access, regardless of geography.

Second is a clear pathway between the skills that are being taught and the employment out there.

And third is being grounded in the Tongan values. Thank you.

Thank you very much. That's fantastic. Now, Mr. Smith, you shared the challenges and opportunities of creating across a global curriculum, and it's great that we were able to sort of come right after your talk so we could learn a little bit more about what you were doing at NCUK. So as you work across countries and education systems, what have you learned about the difference between simply making high-quality education accessible and available and actually making it useful for learners and moving into these pathways that we've been talking about here today?

Well, first of all, I'd just like to echo points that the both ministers have made. I think accessibility is something that's changed. Students want to be able to access qualifications at a global standard in many, many different formats and in very, very different study modes, depending on their country, their different backgrounds that they're coming from. What we're seeing is that students increasingly, and I think it's a really important message that you said earlier, they want to be able to have have their international global qualification. They want the opportunities a global qualification can bring, but we want to bring that to countries so that we're not seeing brain drain. We're not seeing young people leave the country and take those skills abroad. So I think the big focus is, first of all, how do we make the qualification accessible from an access point? How do we make the learning materials relevant to them? It's no good putting a global curriculum out there without localising it, without bringing the examples that are relevant to a context of a student. But afterwards, it's fantastic, and I completely agree with what you said, to get an international degree, get an international qualification. But if it doesn't change your community, it doesn't change the people around you, the value of it is quite limited. So I think working together to bring the value to the individual, but also to the community as a whole, is something that we're really committed to and really connected with.

And I think what I love about this panel is as we are really launching this Transforming Global Education program here at UNGA, this really gives us a lot of the pieces of this puzzle, right? So you have the technology, the infrastructure, the public good that we're bringing from Learning Economy. You have the curriculum that is both global and can help to leapfrog students, but also is local and respects culture and respects space and respects the fact that people need to not only stay where they might be educated, but they need to be local, right, and come back and continue to build in their own country. And then we have Nigeria and Tonga, which are two of our keystone partners for this initiative and are very different, but also have some interesting similarities, right, in the fact that you're thinking about these things from systemic perspectives. And I think what's exciting from our vantage point is that over the next 12 and 24 months, we're going to have some really great case studies coming out of these deployments, out of these systems that can be used globally and in different kinds of countries, whether they're on the African continent or they're in smaller island developing states, that can actually start to truly transform the learning to earning journeys in those countries where we can start to see the kind of impact that I know we all really are dedicated to making. So thank you all for being here this morning. Thank you all for joining me this morning and look forward the rest of the day.

Thank you, Alison, ministers, and Stuart. So we have heard from governments, we have heard from educators and system leaders. We now turn to the people these systems are intended to serve, young people. Our young people must not simply be consulted after the decisions are made. They must help shape these decisions from the beginning, not in the middle, not at the end, but in the beginning. I now invite them to take their seats where their names are, and I hand over to this wonderful group. Welcome them again. ready? Okay.

Hello, everyone. Too often when we talk about transforming education, we talk about young people, not include them. So today we're asking one vital question. What changes when education isn't built for us, it's built with us. Hello, I'm Ashna Parsa, a lead uniter at the United Youth Council. My work is primarily in mental health and neuro-inclusivity, but today I'm going to hand it off to Nayan to introduce us.

Hello, everyone. My name is Nayan Ved. I'm the managing director of the United Youth Council, which is currently a global coalition of over 4,000 members from 60 countries. I work in partnerships and I ensure that youth-led initiatives are heard. Thank you. I'm going to pass it on to Joy.

Thank you so much, Nayan. My name is Joy Tai, and I'm proud to serve as the COO of the Youth Council. I work closely with connecting youth to mentorships and coordinating events. I'm also an educator and an advocate for quality education and youth empowerment.

Passing it along to Caleb. My name is Caleb Lee. I am the global advocacy officer of the Youth Publications and Socioeconomic Forum. This Sanga, I was also the head of the youth delegation for the International Think Tank for Landlocked Developing Countries. We made history as the only IGO, the only intergovernmental organization, to send youth delegates aside from the European Union to the UN. And we actually brought seven 18-year-olds. as part of the official ITT LDC delegation. Thank you.

All right, thank you so much. Now that you understand who we are, I'm going to pass the first question to Joy. What do you think is the biggest challenge facing young people today?

Absolutely.

So I think that we oftentimes as youth in this space hear the slogan to think outside the box.

And I often ask myself, how exactly.

Are we meant to think outside the box when in our current education system, we aren't allowed to do so?

So I think that the biggest.

Challenge facing our youth today is the inability to engage in discourse, to go against the general consensus and to challenge the majority. I think that we need to see a lot more of this interaction and engagement in our educational and education simply be a script telling us what to think, but rather the freedom and the nuance and the ability to think beyond that and to truly think outside of the box. Thanks, Ashna.

Thank you, Joy. Passing it on to Nayan now. With your work in fundraising and partnerships, what do you think it takes to take a young person's idea and turn that into action?

Thank you, Ashna, for that great question. have to say that I'd like to start answering this by saying that young people are not short of ideas. And I'm sure everyone in this room already knows this. You can walk into any classroom and you'll find students who want to fix something in their school, in their classroom, in their community, and in their world. But what really turns those ideas into action is resources. I don't just mean funding. Money matters, but so does mentorship, networks, partnerships, platforms, and real institutional support. And this is the part I feel most strongly about. We need to work with adults in spaces exactly like this one, not just so our voices are heard, but so we can learn and lead. We can bring the passion and the fresh ideas, but we don't always have the execution. Adults have the experience. And when the two come together, it actually solves problems at a much faster rate and more efficiently. Thank you.

Yeah, that was really enlightening. Caleb, I know that you work with, what led you to start the YPSF.

Yeah, of course. So Thank you for that question and amazing answers to both of you. YPSF was founded with a key mission, and that's to bridge the gap between young New Yorkers and the United Nations. So of course, we recognize the work of the New York City Mayor's Office for International Affairs and the New York City Department of Education. Shout out to my old boss, Florence Dennis. So those two programs that they have is more of teaching about the SDGs. rather than meaningful youth participation. As New York City is the most diverse city in the world, there's young people who can represent almost all of the 193 member states at the UN. And so what we do, one of the biggest programs that we have is we actually, when member states cannot bring their own United Nations youth delegates, we actually bring in young people from those from those from those young New Yorkers with those national backgrounds to actually be the youth leader for the for the missions. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah. And Nayan, I was just a question. Why do you how do you think institutions are falling short of supporting young people?

Honestly, I think the first part where institutions are falling short of supporting young people is tokenism. Too often, young people are invited to rooms like this one and asked to speak, but only as a percentage that the company can express. It is not that they're inflicting meaningful change onto the outcome of that room. everyone here can leave today and not take anything away from this. But what young people should try to do and institutions should influence this is that young people should try to actually change the outcome. Because if not, we're nothing more than decoration on the wall of the outcome. The second thing is short-term thinking. Too many youth opportunities are a one-off event, a summit, a competition, a weekend program. They can be inspiring, but real change takes And when the support ends, the idea usually ends with it. Thank you.

Wow, that was very, it was a very good answer. Caleb, when it comes to YPSF, what do you think is important in preparing youth to be part of the decisions that affect them?

So again, of course, like Nayan said, like mentorship, partnerships, institutional backing is I think one of the biggest challenges because you really can't be in spaces without the support from adults. So we really, really need support from adults. Definitely institutional partnerships.

Thank you. And now going down the line, I would love for all of you guys to comment on the idea. People say youth are the leaders of tomorrow, but what happens when we stop waiting for tomorrow?

Yeah, absolutely.

I can start with this.

I think like you mentioned, right, youth are often seen as the leaders of tomorrow and we're often.

Told we need to inherit the future.

And that's something that we're really lacking right now in the status quo in what I see with the education system as an educator myself is an inability to think outside the boundaries set for us. We're told to think a certain way, to agree with these common consensus. I think what we really need right now is more freedom and nuance to be creative, to break down those boundaries and to be more than just what is simply presented in front of us. And so I think a really big thing, you know, when we talk about being the leaders of tomorrow.

When we talk about inheriting the future, is to make sure that we can think.

Outside of what simply is defined as the future right now.

That was a really good answer, Joy. I completely agree with that. But honestly, I think that if we change or if you started leading now instead of tomorrow, everything would change. Collaboration with adults would actually lead to problems being solved years sooner. And so I don't want everyone here to applaud. I want us to give, I want them to give us the resources, give us the trust to actually solve global issues. because while you wait for tomorrow, we are already leading today.

Yeah, I mean, of course, I've heard that phrase pretty much all throughout my time here at High Level Week. I think the education system plays a big role when it comes to whether or not we can actually lead today. I'm still in high school, so you know, I obviously have to balance out my school, but when school penalizes you for, being an active participant in the world. You know, like schools have Socratic seminars, right? Like they're actually, you know, make advancing in terms of like, how can we start practicing real world stuff inside the classroom, but then they penalize you. And so I have teachers who belittle me, so who, and they penalize you for actually doing things outside of the classroom. And that's what I, and so if you want to lead today, we also have to look at the systems who force us down. And so I think, you know, I hope that the education system can be reformed in that sense. Yes.

That was very inspirational. Thank you all. And as we reach toward the end of our time, I would love to hear how you would finish the sentence. Education works for young people when blank.

Should we go in reverse order this time?

I think education works when, of course, like I said, when we have support from adults, when we have support from our parents, our adult mentors, from our teachers, from our schools, not just penalizing you, right? When you actually want to make a difference in the world. And yeah, that's really about it. We really, you know, a lot of us really feel that, you know, we have this burden of, you know, disappointment or whether we're doing the right things, especially when it's not great in the view of our parents or our teachers or the adults in our life.

I'd like to finish the sentence by saying education works for young people when opportunity is matched to the resource, as I've said before. Because having an idea or a voice is very powerful, but it means very little if you do not have the correct support to turn that idea into action, as Aishna asked me earlier. So I'll pass it on to Joy.

Thank you, Nayan. I think that education works best for young people when we are given the freedom to define what that means for ourselves. And as an educator myself, kind of just building on this answer, I feel like so often we are given so much knowledge, so much information, literally at our fingertips as we live in this age of technology. And I think that right now, as we are shifting for this new generation to take the reins, to inherit the future, we need to have the freedom. We need to have the ability to take this information and think for ourselves. We need to be given the freedom to truly inherit the future. And we can only do that if we're allowed to define what that means for ourselves.

Wow, I loved all of those answers. Thank you so much. And I think that's a very great way and a very powerful way to end this panel, because at the end of the day, transforming education isn't about building a better system for young people. It's about creating it for us, with us. So thank you, Joy. Thank you, Nayan. And thank you, Caleb. And thank you all for being here today.

Thank you so much, guys.

Thank you to our young leaders. Education should also give learners the imagination to shape what comes next. And with that, I invite Justin, who is Public's Director of Media, and author and illustrator Morgan Alice for the power of imagination, world building, and possibility. Justin, Morgan, over to you.

How's everyone doing today?

Well, we're excited for this conversation, excited to introduce you all to Morgan, and I think.

You will be pleasantly surprised with where this one goes. She has some really brilliant contributions around thinking of how we look into emotional intelligence and what she calls frequency intelligence. Yeah, Morgan is an author, illustrator, entertainment creator, and educator who is working to shape a better world, definitely focused on kids and how we can use imagination and possibility to create a better world.

So, yeah, Morgan, over to you. Hello, I'm Morgan. So, To find my inner voice, I often sing a prayer before I give any sort of information to find alignment. So that's where I'm going to start. You hold the unicorn, llama-corn. Yeah, it's very important. Hiya, hiya, hi. Hiya, hiya, hi. Hiya, hiya hi. Hiya, hiya, hi. So my superpower is joy and never taking myself too seriously. And I've spent the last 15 years of my life creating worlds and art and books and music, really to inspire the inner child inside every one of us and to inspire us to create new family legacies that empower children to create their worlds. I know that the future of this world depends on us being able to dream really big, beyond any constraint, beyond any limitation that we've been handed from the generation before us. And as a parent, as an educator, as a creator, I know my role is to uninhibit the children and the inner child in you and me. And so I was asked to come here and talk about the power of joy, but also the power of imagination and aligning our frequency. The amazing, you know, youth leaders that were up here before were talking about really getting freedom to create the world. And I think that's the thing that I would love to talk about today is like the freedom to create our world through joy and that Basically, we stop being so serious when the youngins come to us and instead be like, yes, how do I support, how do I walk around? How do I become a part of this universe that you're creating? Because I know that your beauty, your world is worth investing in. So that would be where I start.

This is a little bit more about Morgan's perspective.

I wanted to kind of get in and.

Probably ask you a twofold question. So thinking about education and also thinking about partnerships. So part one is what I know you just touched on a bit, but if you were to wrap it into a quick thought on what we want, what do we, what do we want young people to, to become, what would your response be to that? And then part two is what do we need to get there?

Okay. So, I want them to become exactly what they want to become. And I trust the next generation to dream so beautifully that all I need to do is create as much opportunity and attunement to what they're bringing through that they get to shine. And so I really do trust the benevolence of the next generation, like with my whole heart. And so I'm just excited to bring a world that also trusts that and sees that genius. Like I have a four year old and he can speak as intelligent as I could when I was 15. And that's four. Like the next generation is pure genius. And so, yeah, I'm just excited to liberate ourselves from thinking that we know more versus that we are in collaboration with. And then the second piece is, I think, to set up that I feel like we remind ourselves and educators and families that our role in the universe is the expansion, that every human being is a dreamer, is an infinite creator, and they're literally the expansion of what is happening. And so the more we can actually see properly like truly see genius, truly see capacity, truly see the confidence and the beauty, like we liberate the energy that's there.

I have a follow up question for you about that.

So obviously there's a lot of complexities in the world while things are continuing to move forward. We're also faced with all types of challenges. So I would agree with you from experience that I have a four year old as well.

And the level of intelligence that I find is is not what I feel like I recall from my physical and mental body at that age. So I can attest to that and agree.

I'm curious, like, what are your?

Thoughts on how we navigate that in the environment that we're in, that growth and intelligence and wisdom in juxtaposition to all of the other tides that we are experiencing and facing? Yeah.

Okay, so I believe that we need to protect the innocence of imagination. So what that means is instead of censoring, we encourage our genius kids, toddlers, youth, young adults to understand what they put in their mind matters. So how we think matters. So if they're putting in junk food, which is thought that suppresses them, depresses them, makes them not believe in their infinite potential, that is something that we need to not eat. And on the other side, we can encourage their joy, their passion, what they're attracted to and uphold it, like allow them to go down those rabbit holes while maintaining an awareness that what they put in their mind is the blueprint. And so help them understand that and create sovereignty in their thought. I think the most important thing we can do is help create thought intelligence, like what do I put in, what do I give my attention to, and then how do I feel? So if we can teach them that when they put something in and if it doesn't feel right, that's their soul, that's their body, that's the way their infinite source is telling them this doesn't actually compute with love, peace, prosperity, creativity, joy, peace, contentment on the planet and for myself. And so teaching them discernment and empowering them and trusting them, I think is the best way we can do that.

Well, I'm gonna put this on as well.

Do you care to explain this really briefly?

Yeah, okay. So in, we are the creators of this world. And, and so obviously through thought, so we expand the universe through a thought anybody who's ever done changes because they think at first, they'll leave it with their heart and align their action and their frequency with that. And what I mean by frequency, often people identify that as emotions, what they feel, I feel good, I feel aligned, I feel in flow. Well, these are frequencies we can attune to. And so not just aligning because the outside is showing us that we're doing good, but aligning before so that we become the transmission of the outcome. And so this little map is basically that same thing. So we think we dream. We align and we create the future. And just giving that blueprint to all the children and telling them truly that they create the universe. There is nothing outside of their capacity. And to use that power wisely is probably the greatest. My dad once told me, he's like, when you grow up, you got to use your power wisely, you know, and so use your powers for good. So that's what I hope every kid and little genius gets to understand is like how to use their powers for good.

Sorry, almost dropped our little friend here.

The next thing I want to ask you is when we were talking about intelligence, human nature, tools.

Can you talk about what you're feeling with the landscape right now with tools and including AI?

Yeah. Okay, so AI is my best friend in the sense that it gives me an opportunity to have civil discourse. to have a place to push against, to push against in thought and energy and what I'm creating. If I use it as an echo chamber, it's not very useful, but if I use it as a place to like really be set free in how I think and push back, because I feel like we really need discourse in ourselves and each other. We really need to push. We are create like creators and creatures that expand through a little bit of struggle. So I think like struggle is good. Struggling with our thought is good. And so as long as we're using these technologies to access our own intelligence, to refine our thought, to become better thinkers, I think it's really useful. And if we're using it to tell us how to think, I don't think that's very useful at all. So, yeah, and I actually believe, like, I believe so wholeheartedly in human potential and technology, and our youth is so aware of the pitfalls, like, I'm not actually worried about that, I think they and us will solve any problems that we're running into. And we just got to keep reminding each other that we're the infinite intelligence. We actually created that because it's a reflection of who we are. And we get to keep evolving and curating how we think, how we act, how we feel on the planet.

Thank you for sharing that. I want to actually move forward, maybe skip this for a time and actually move into this one. So this one, where did this come from?

Yeah, so emotional intelligence is knowing where you are on the scale. Am I in fear? Am I in grief? Am I feeling insecure? Frequency intelligence is being able to aim and instigate your feeling state. And so where the magic of this comes in is that green contentment. So most people are taught that their state is a reflection of what happens to them. So something bad happens to me, I'm sad, I'm defeated, something good happens to me, I am worthy, I am good. And what I hope that is a transition in our society is that we learn that we actually, by creating equanimity, being happy no matter what, being worthy no matter what, being a genius no matter what, being in those energies no matter what, we start to accumulate momentum in those kinds of thoughts, actions, and energies, and we realize how we create the universe through our frequency. We're transmitting who we are, all those beautiful dreams and thoughts. and creations are when you get aligned and you share. So really teaching people how to be content no matter their circumstance and then see how the universe will reflect over time the true inner world of their insides. So I think the missing piece for most people is we think about creating the world outside, but the inside, how we feel, what we think about is what the outside is a reflection of. And so, yeah, I think that's a good, that's great.

So, my last real question here is, thinking about the new economy and where the economy is going, can you relate world building to economic power?

Yes. Okay, so every human being on this planet If they truly know how powerful they are and that they can create a world inside and outside, that means that the redistribution of resources will automatically happen because a dream will call to itself what it needs to manifest. And what I mean by that is every single human being that's ever made change, ever built a business, believes it before they see it. And we act like it's anomaly, but it's not. It's actually the truth of how we move through the universe and expand it. And so the more we remind each other that we're infinite creators, we're world builders, whether it be small, like I'm building a family, I'm building a sweet neighborhood, I'm building safety or big, I'm building infrastructure, I'm building new paradigms, they all require the same thing. They require the belief and the inner alignment and then the expression on the outside will follow. And so when we do that, when we actually remember who we are and encourage each other, like believe in each other, see each other and never, ever disempower another human by pretending they don't have this creative power, then we all rise together, right? So suppression often happens more through our thought and belittling people than through our action. The action is actually the second part and the thought is the first part. So for me, I'm always working on the thought level first and then we start to see the change in the outer atmosphere. Is that answer.

Okay, great.

Do you want to squeeze the llama corn? Go and love my corn, love my corn. I think that would be a great way. This is a great way to end, I think.

This is how SDG 4, 17, 9, and 8 connect.

Thank you guys so much.

Thank you, Justin and Morgan. Imagination becomes especially powerful when young people are given the agency to turn ideas into action. Please welcome Zoya Kalinsky, founder of the United Youth Council. Zoya.

Excellencies, esteemed delegates, friends, good morning. My name is Zoya Kalinsky, and I'm the 15-year-old founder of the United Youth Council, a global community of young people working to make sure youth have a real seat at the global decision-making table. We've spent this morning talking about education, innovation, entrepreneurship, and what it takes to prepare people for the future. But I want us to take a step back, because education doesn't exist in a box. You cannot talk about education without talking about poverty or hunger or health or climate or equality or peace or the future of work. Because what we learn shapes what we understand, and what we understand shapes the decisions we make, and those decisions shape the world around us. Education can give someone the knowledge to understand a problem, the skills to do something about it, and the confidence to actually participate in the decisions that affect their lives. And that is why these issues cannot be treated separately. They are connected. And if we are serious about building systems that work for the future, young people cannot simply be the people those systems are designed for. We have to be part of designing them. The question is, Do young people actually get to be a part of that conversation? Because youth participation should not be something we add at the end. It should be a part of how we build solutions from the beginning. So today, rather than me telling you what that connection looks like, I want you to hear it directly from some incredible young leaders with heritages that span the entire world. Because remember, education is blind to location just as much as it is to age. Allow me to start. Education gives us the knowledge and opportunities to build pathways out of poverty. Education helps us understand the causes behind world hunger and gives communities the tools to build food secure futures. Education helps us understand our health, care for ourselves and others, and build healthier communities. Education gives every young person the opportunity to learn, question, create, and to lead. Education should give every young person the same opportunity to learn, lead, and decide who they want to become, regardless of gender.

Education teaches us that clean water matters and gives communities the knowledge to protect it.

Education gives young people the knowledge and skills to imagine and build a cleaner energy future.

Education gives young people the skills and opportunities to build meaningful careers and stronger economies.

Education gives us the tools to turn curiosity into innovation and ideas into solutions. Education can open the door to opportunity, regardless of where we come from or the circumstances we were born into.

Education helps us imagine and build communities that are safer, more inclusive, and sustainable for everyone.

Education teaches us how what we consume, produce, and waste shapes the world around us.

Education gives us the knowledge to understand climate change and the tools to address it.

Education teaches how deeply connected we are to our oceans and why we need to protect them.

Education gives us the knowledge to understand our ecosystems and the responsibility to protect them.

Education teaches us to understand different perspectives, resolve differences, and build more peaceful societies.

Education connects us. It connects communities, countries, ideas, and people. And if we're going to achieve any of these goals, we cannot do it alone. Because the future we're building belongs to all of us. Thank you.

Thank you to our young leaders and to every speaker and participant who contributed this morning. Today's conversations remind us that education transformation is not ultimately measured by a new policy, platform, or program. It is measured by whether learners gain knowledge, opportunity and confidence to shape their own futures. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a great day.

The clock is counting down.

The clock is counting down.

The clock is counting down.

So when you see like two minutes, you might want to back up or wrap around for one more quick.

Yeah, I think so.

This guy is.

Good morning. Good morning. SDG Media Zone, day five of SDG Media Zone. We're getting there, and we have an amazing program for the fifth day, Friday of UN General Assembly week, UN General Assembly 81st, and the 10th anniversary of the SDG Media Zone. It's great to have you all here, and I'd also like to say a good afternoon and good evening to those of you watching around the world on the stream. we have a great day. We're going to be talking health systems, we're going to be talking football, we're going to be talking disarmament, we're going to be talking about AI, common theme through the week, and we're going to be talking to a great group of creators to close the day. So stay with us all day. It's a great program. And with that, we're going to go ahead and get started with the first conversation, advancing healthier futures, the health systems we haven't built yet. And I'd like to just pass it over to the moderator, Pamela Kelly Lauder, the operating officer of the diplomatic Curry first conversation welcome to the SDG media zone stage.

Good morning everyone I'm Pam Kelly a lotter with diplomatic courier and we're so glad you're here this morning and I'm gonna put my glass so I can we're gonna jump right and we tell global health through big institutions, ministries, agencies, hospitals. But the fast movement is smaller and closer these days. The pharmacy aisle, the phone in your hand, the choices people make before they ever get to the clinic. Who now calls it self-care and endorses it not as a stopgap for the unreached.

But also as a real pillar of how universal coverage extends.

The panelists here are going to talk a little more about that with us. Valerie Boulay with the WHO Foundation mobilizes the partnerships and capital behind it.

Daniella Foster with Bayer stewards the pledge to reach 10 million underserved people by 2030.

100 million.

100 million, oh, thank you. Thank you, that's wonderful. Well, we're gonna jump right in. Valerie, I'd like to start with you. The Foundation's role is to bring new resources and partners to WHO's mission.

When you make the case for self-care, specifically to a funder, let's say, what's the argument that lands and what's the one that makes them hesitate?

Thank you, Pamela. I'm delighted to be here today. I think what's the one, I guess, argument that lands with any type of donor is the fact that our health systems are really under constraints. and so that we cannot simply continue to do and build on what we've been doing in terms of our health systems. And I think, while there's a lot of difference between different type of funders, so if we're talking to a corporate sponsor, a private sector partner, or philanthropy, there will be different arguments, but there's always alignment, and that's our role at the WHO Foundation, being the bridge between the private sector and WHO strategic priorities. there's always an initial alignment and everyone can agree that there is a need to do things differently. So we know now that there's 4.6 billion people who still are not fully covered by essential health services. We also know that there will be by 2030 over 10 million, a global shortage of 10 millions of health workers. So we really do need to do things differently and change the narrative. And I think that's why donors understand it's a very compelling case for access, scale, and to ensure that we are able to deliver things differently. And that's why self-care becomes an important part. And when we talk about self-care, it is not just asking people to become healthier and look after themselves. We're talking about evidence-based intervention. So a woman doing a sample for HPV screening, a self-test for HIV, somebody at home monitoring diabetes, or blood pressure. So we're really trying to look at intervention, which are, again, very evidence-based. And that's something that will really help. And I think this is where philanthropy and private sector can de-risk. And there's a real investment in, I guess, the infrastructure. And that's where, at times, there could be hesitation with the private sector, notably companies, when we are looking at the time horizon. A lot of donors would like to have very tangible evidence outcome in a very finite momentum and horizon. That's not always the case when we have to invest in creating more sophistication in the infrastructure. For self-care to become sustainable, equitable, and accessible, we do need to invest in infrastructure. So the regulation, the system health strengthening, and so that isn't something that's the most visible part of the ecosystem. And so once we invest in creating the foundations, then we are able to make self-care sustainable and equitable. And I think that's where, again, philanthropy and private sector can come in to de-risk, to take the first step in transforming the system.

Thank you.

And, Daniella, on that note, I'd like to turn to you.

Bear is committed to reach 100 million underserved people by 2030.

So in just a few years, access can mean a production on a shelf, a price someone can actually pay, or information they can use.

So access takes many forms. Which is the hard part, would you say, if you can break it down for us?

And where are you furthest along?

So first of all, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here with you all and everybody online. I would say there's a few pieces to this. First, access is not just a product on a shelf. That's one piece of it. But it has to be coupled with access to health information, understanding of how to use it, integration into the entire health ecosystem. And also, the piece that I think a lot about, and this was just mentioned, is the access paradox. So we know that half of the world doesn't have access to basic and essential health services. We also were hearing about how there is going to be an 11 million healthcare provider shortage by 2030. So the reality is that our systems are incredibly strained right now. So looking at things like evidence-based self-care is not just pragmatic, but that's going to be a key part of the future when we think about health systems and also reaching people. So increasingly, the hard part is the gap. Where I am encouraged is we are seeing so many solutions that are meeting people where they are. So if I think about last mile delivery, if I think about ecosystems, specifically in maternal health, where there's been tremendous advances around expanding access to things like multiple micronutrient supplementation, which is essentially prenatals for pregnant women. We know how critical these interventions are. Every dollar that goes into that yields a $37 return into the health ecosystem and productivity. And it also sets a child up for the best start in life. It helps to prevent stunting, helps with healthy birth weights, et cetera. So these are the types of interventions that I'm finding incredibly promising. I would say the same thing around cardiovascular health. This is another area where we know if we look at health systems, the majority of the burden on health systems are non-communicable diseases. And if we look at cardiovascular disease, it is still the number one killer of both men and women, and it is largely invisible and silent. And so here's where we know that by the time you go into the health system or you've had an event, it's already too late. So we're still treating people as patients, and we really need to bend that curve much sooner up to focus on prevention. And that's one of the things that is going to be key when we talk about access is, how do we move towards preventative solutions so that we reach people before they're sick, before they become patients? And that also will help alleviate some of the burden that we see on the health systems, appreciating that So much of this is happening in the community. I would say just one thing. On average, when we look at half of the world, individuals are spending less than five minutes in a given year with a doctor. So five minutes isn't even enough to say, hi, my name is, and have some of the basic conversations. So we know the rest of the time, science-based, evidence-based health care is a first and last line of care. Thank you.

That's a lot to think about. And Valerie, I'd like to turn it over to you again. I have another question for you. So on this note, self-care can extend care to people a clinic will never reach, to Daniella's point, or it shifts cost and responsibility only to those who may not be.

Equipped to carry it in some cases.

How do you make sure the resources you mobilize reach the underserved?

Thank you, and I think that's a very vast question, but the first thing I would say is to try to ensure that self-care becomes very much embedded and an integrated, fully funded part of the UHC system, I think, just like any other component. And so there's a need to have, again, an integrated ecosystem, whether, as I said before, philanthropy and private sector can de-risk, then support the government. So WHO will provide the guidelines, the government's need to take ownership. So self-care should be complement. It's an additional, it's an added value. It is not about substituting and enabling government and health system to withdraw. And I think this is the important part. The equity piece should not be an add-on. And I've obviously, for me, that's the test of whether if self-care is working or not. And so that's very important. And governments are asking WHO to support them. So we've been created in our partnership with Bayer, for example, supporting WHO to create tools to help systems, to help Ministry of Health embed tools. So Zambia is a good example of a health system, which is actually within their national package. There's interventions such as pregnancy self-test or HIV self-testing. So there's a lot of work and all of this is beyond here is an app, test yourself, go. It's really embedding this. So at the outset, when we actually thinking about the system in itself, and I think that's important. Again, this is not becoming an excuse for the health system to withdraw. It's about deciding safely and equitably what can people do to help themselves. And that should be embedding at the outset when we're creating the systems.

Thank you. So there have been some amazing advancements.

Lots of data now, promising pilots, but we're looking for the balance also. So, Danielle, I'd like to ask you one more question. Self-care only works if people trust what they're taking and the guidance around it, to your point, Valerie?

And in an era of AI-generated advice, what role do you see AI playing in healthcare?

Will it save us all? just that small question. So, you know, when we look at AI right now, sometimes people are looking at it to be the silver bullet. And I want to just mention what it is and what it is not. So today, AI is not an intervention. It's the intelligence layer. And that intelligence layer can be incredibly helpful when it's based on trusted information, when it's based on evidence, when it's integrated into not just health systems, but frontline health workers. There's an incredible role that it can play helping community health workers reach more people, analyze data quickly, understand what the solutions are that they need. And there's been, of course, tremendous advances around breakthroughs with AI and new therapies and things like that, that will be very promising. At the same time, I think one of the most pragmatic solutions today is to use AI as a key tool for prevention. When we talk about non-communicable diseases, for example, many of those are largely preventable. And we have good evidence, we have good data, we know the diet and lifestyle factors that need to go into that. And this is where AI can play a huge role tomorrow. helping to expand the reach of community health workers, helping even just with tablets to get to last mile delivery. One of the tools that I find particularly interesting is if we look again at cardiovascular disease, there is a tool that's available online for free. You can get it on your phone and you can know within 10 minutes, just a quick, simple quiz, low tech. but AI backed, what your 10-year risk of developing cardiovascular disease is. And that's incredibly powerful. That will save lives. So I like to think about it not in terms of one major silver bullet today, but the integration that it can play into things like last mile delivery, into freeing up capacity for clinicians, given that we know how strained our health systems can be. And also working on that last mile delivery piece, which is so hard. but AI can help with remote patient access, with different diagnostics tools, etc. Thank you for that perspective.

And we just have a few moments. The time really flew, didn't it?

Diplomatic Courier focuses on signals for the future.

So I'd like to ask you all.

Each to give one signal.

The single thing you'll watch over the next few years, and you'd encourage other people to watch, that will tell us whether self-care is genuinely reshaping health systems.

And Valerie, I'll start with you.

Thank you very much, Pnau. And I think if I'm thinking about one specific signal, it's probably data and making sure that self-care becomes integrated in the health system data of countries. we do see a lot about, again, and I've mentioned earlier on, how we want to embed and strengthen the health system by adding self-care, so making sure that it's not an afterthought. Very similar, again, if I'm reflecting on some example in the past, whether it was safe driving or smoking, we didn't just ask people to stop smoking and make better choices. We created an enabling environment. We looked at regulations, smoke-free spaces, we looked at advertisement. And that's the same here. So for me, it's within that enabling environment, looking at the inclusion of data into the health infrastructure. And I think that's the system, the signal I'd be monitoring, making sure that it becomes integrated, perhaps in the national government dashboard. So that data piece is critical for us to be able to monitor the progress and the embedding of self-care in the national health systems.

Thank you.

Daniela, how about you?

To me, it's one sentence. It's the transition from sick care to well care. And we have systems that are really good at treating people when they're sick. Yet when we look at the prevention side and the promise of it, only 2% of health budgets today, 2% to 3% depending on where you are, are spent on prevention. And when we look at non-communicable diseases, you have to get to them early. Many are largely preventable. So it's that shift in the system and that transition from sick care to well care, and also the financing behind it to get there, given that we will have this 11 million map in healthcare clinicians by 2030. So that's one of the key ways forward. So the transition from sick care to well care.

Well, ladies, I can't believe it, but we're already out of time.

And I've really enjoyed hearing your perspectives.

And I'd like to thank you for all of the work that you're.

Doing to take us to well care, the whole world to well care.

And thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you for having us. Bye-bye. Thank you.

All right, good morning again, SDG Media Zone. Great to have you all here in person with us and all those of you watching around the world. A good afternoon and good evening to you all again. We're gonna go from health systems to football and you all wonder why football, but it's football and the Sustainable Development Goals. And we're gonna talk about influence to impact, football's power to shape a more sustainable, healthy and inclusive world. think it's fair to say, and probably everyone here knows it, that football is the world's most popular sport and also the most accessible. The reach is not in doubt. The question this session puts on the table is what football does with it. The panel's title says it plainly, influence the impact. And no institution delivers the SDGs on its own. Football can't do it on its own, but it's part of that ecosystem that is the UN, the government, civil society, and football can play a huge role. I'm going to talk briefly about Football for the Goals. Football for the Goals is a UN initiative. We launched it in 2022 in the Department of Global Communications, the team that's with you here all week. And it gives the global football community a platform to engage with, advocate for, and act on the SDGs. Members commit to sustainability policies and practices, implementing, that's key, implementing and advocating for the SDGs. We now have about 480 organizations from 124 countries as members of Football for the Goals. And that's the six major regional confederations that govern football down to grassroots organizations and then, you know, leagues, clubs, associations, everything in between. So now I'd like to intro our amazing group of conversationalists here. You know, part of that is that we've, of Football for the Goals, is we've established the champions, and Eni Aluko is one of those champions. We're really proud to have her in the group of Football for the Goals champions. Former member of the English national team, so as a former Lioness, she has one of the most powerful voices in the game on equality for women in football. Also joining us from one of the most popular clubs in the world, maybe the most popular, at least I talked to my colleague Carlos Islam over there, From Liverpool FC, Lucas Leiva, former Brazilian international and Liverpool FC legend. Spent a decade with Liverpool and a career that also took him to Italy and then back to Brazil, his home country. And Rishi Jain, Impact Director at Liverpool Football Club, who leads the club's social and environmental impact work. And we think that's great to have a club that actually has someone leading impact for the team. And then now I would like to hand it over to the moderator. Really, I'm really happy personally. I'll tell you why in a second. I have Shaka Hyslop, a former Premier League player and Trinidad and Tobago international player who I got to see regularly when I was living in Trinidad and Tobago in 2005 as Trinidad and Tobago qualified at that time as the smallest nation ever to qualify for the World Cup. And he's now a senior analyst at ESPN. Shaka, over to you.

Thank you very much, Rob. Thank you. Lady, gents, that's as good as we're getting as a warm-up and a stretch. I'm jumping straight into it and, and Annie, I'm coming straight to you. You often talk about the importance of, of women having not just a place in football, but a seat at head tables, making decisions, driving impact within the game and outside of it. Um, what does that look like, uh, in terms of getting women's involvement at that level and how does that impact wider society and gender equality?

Yeah, so I think for a long time, women's football has had to also be a gender equality movement, right? So it's what happens on the pitch. Obviously, it's the investment in resources, the investment in female players, making sure that salaries are good, making sure that you know, minimum salaries are good. But then that has an impact in the wider society in terms of women and young girls. I think obviously men's football for a long time, women have not really been participants at the highest level in boards, you know, off the pitch coaching. So women's football really has an opportunity to shift economic empowerment for women within the sport. And what that looks like, I think, is as the growth of the game happens, opportunities and doors open off the pitch, commercially, behind the cameras, production, broadcasting, coaching. And with that comes increased salaries, investment, I'm part of an investment group called Mercury 13. We own three women's football teams, and a big part of that investment is how do you invest in the resources to create professional clubs around the world for women, which then obviously means investment in the operations, in the salaries, et cetera. One of the things I'm really excited about is the impact on local economies now. So when the World Cup, for example, comes around in Brazil next year, Lucas will be excited about that. it's it's the local economies that then impact female entrepreneurs, local business owners who are who are women, right? And so as women's football has grown globally, it's become a platform for women to be economically empowered to to own more, to to build businesses, to get involved commercially with brands, to to to change their lives in terms of the investment. So it it's been beautiful to see the growth of of of women's football but how that's impacted women and their economic empowerment in general.

Excellent. And Lucas, let me build on that. Given the fact Brazil hosted the World Cup in 2014, the men's World Cup in 2014, and now looking forward to hosting the women's World Cup, what impacts did Brazil recognize in 2014 and are hoping to mirror for the women in 2027?

We were talking a little bit about how excited the country is to host the World Cup, Women's World Cup. I'm really excited because in 2014, my city where I live only hosted a couple of games. And I think my whole city now, my city now will host about six or seven. So we can see, of course, it's a long way to go, of course, but we've seen progress in terms of how women's are challenging to be equal, you know, with the men's football and especially in Brazil, that is a football is so important for the country. We've seen some good strides and we've seen some young women starting to play. So this is really exciting times for women's football and also it will impact the country as well.

Excellent. And good luck with that. Everybody's invited to stay at Lucas's next year for the women's World Cup, by the way. Rishi, let me turn you, given your role with Liverpool Football Club, one of the biggest global brands in the game, at an institutional level, how do Liverpool drive that change? How do we as fans or looking in from the outside, how do you recognize measurable differences that those institutional changes or efforts may make?

Of course.

So at Liverpool, we have an overarching sustainability program called the Redway. And the strapline for that, it's our commitment to build a better future for our people, our planet, and our communities. It's everything around diversity inclusion, it's everything around our environmental commitments. And then our communities pillar really encapsulates the incredible work of the LFC Foundation, the club's official charity. What my role is, is to convene that work, bring it all together, the fantastic work of colleagues, hundreds of colleagues across the club and communicate it and bring it to life on stages like today. And hopefully I'll do a good job of that. How that translates into action, because obviously that's a really important thing, is you can have the strapline, you can have the identity, but where is the real substance underneath it? The best part of my job is coming to a place like New York, sitting on the stage of colleagues like yourself, but the real work is done at home. Because if we're not actually doing the work, it becomes a very inauthentic and it becomes something that's actually a problem for us to not be doing that. So for example, one of the recent activities that our foundation have just delivered is the You Mean the World programme. So that's a programme with one of our commercial partners where we've gone out to the hundreds of millions of support, Liverpool supporters across the world and said, How can you deliver social action in your own community? And the 10,000 people in total have joined that course. And that's been like food drives, it's been beach cleanups, it's been litter pickups, it's been community engagement pieces. And that's literally from our foundation using the part of the Liverpool Football Club badge and hopefully spreading good across the world. And obviously in the name of Liverpool Football Club. On the other side, we obviously have our players and our players voices so much more powerful. than anyone's, much more powerful than mine. People want to see their faces, not mine on screen, to be very honest. But one thing that I always think is really important with players and how we work with them is to ask them to speak to the right topics in the right way. I think where players maybe find it a little bit difficult and clubs maybe have the challenges is when players are asked to support causes that aren't important to them. and then they get caught out or they behave in a different way or they may say the wrong thing and it puts them under a lot of pressure. My job and the job of many colleagues across the club is to give them the platform to talk about what they're passionate about. So for example, we have a women's player, Bjarta Olsson, she's a Swedish international. She came to me a couple of months ago and said, Rishi, I'm doing my master's in sustainable technologies. And I was like, great. What does that mean? the first question. Then she explained it and then she said, can I come and support you and your team a couple of days a month? And I said, absolutely. I would never say no to that. And then she's actually now looking at how she can build her hair portfolio and her brand and understanding for sustainability. So we've worked with someone, given them a platform, obviously on the pitch, but also off the pitch as well. Lucas, you played in England, in Italy, in Brazil. How can some of these institutional efforts, how can they be relayed or how do fans continue to drive some of that sustainability off the field? As fans, you show up on a match day to support your team, but I think supporting the club goes a whole lot further. Given your experiences all over the world, how do fans kind of step up to those challenges that clubs initiate?

I think, like Richie said, I think, first of all, I think we all have to feel connected, you know, with the cause. And I have to be honest, I never talked much about sustainability since I was, maybe I became a father or I went to Liverpool when I was only 20 years old. So to feel connected with the cause and bring the power of football to communicate and engage with the community. I think that's a great way to start. And it's not only about the clubs, I think it's about the players, about the fans. you know, and I had the chance to play in different countries and it's important to bring that together and using the platform that we have to raise engagement. I think, you know, of course, I'm not an expert, but I have a voice and people want to listen and that's why we are here, you know, try to raise engagement, awareness and the Red Way that Richie said is a fantastic project as well.

I'll echo that so often. Um, we as, as young people only recognize our, our responsibility to the next generation when we become parents ourselves, and understanding that responsibility to them and to, to, to, to a wider generation, we, we embrace so many of those causes, and so let me ask you, um… When have you recognized as a player, as an administrator, somebody involved in the, as a fan, when have you been able to recognize some of that fan engagement, some of that institutional engagement, and how it's impacted the game as you know it, your game, the women's game?

Yeah, I think fan engagement within the women's game is critical. It's what has brought the women's game to the place it is now where you know, millions of people are watching on TV, you know, you're getting full stadiums now. You know, I remember once upon a time when nobody came to our games. And so it's very nice to see the journey now of fans passionate about, you know, the national team, passionate about the leagues and the clubs in women's football. I think beyond that, it's, you know, I really like the word Lucas used there. It is about the connection because I think there is, there is a disconnect that we see a lot in football, you know, the astronomical numbers that are often sort of talked about in the media and people just can't relate. And I think the women's game, we've done a really good job of relating to people, inspiring the next generation of girls, connecting. And I think brands now when they're coming coming in commercially even with the some of the big numbers that are coming in now to women's football there is a conversation about let's make sure we're connecting let's make sure it's authentic to the fans let's make sure the fans are on the journey with us um everything down to you know when a brand is creating new kit for um a team the fans will be involved in that um you know women will be involved in that you know that there was uh you know famous campaign around you know getting rid of white shorts because obviously we're women and we we have you know women's issues and periods and things all of that involved fans and women and girls actually having a voice And so that's, I think, a beautiful part of women's football is the opportunity to really connect with people and give them a voice and allow them to feel part of the team that they support.

Let me ask a very personal question here. What's my responsibility as a man, as a former male footballer to the women's game to continue to bridge that gap in power, in representation at every single level so that we can recognize the equality that we all yearn for.

I think it's a great question and I thank you for the question because male allyship is huge. You know, you guys have huge platforms. You're loved and adored by fans. And I think what male allies can do in the women's game is really be a voice, signal and promote Also, I think open doors and create opportunities where you have access and women don't, open that door, right? So whether it's broadcasting, whether it's coaching, the networks that you have access to, some of us don't have access to it. And so opening those doors. And the last one, I want to sort of make an example, use an example of somebody like Alexis Ohanian, who is a huge ally for women's sport. He's invested hundreds of millions of pounds of dollars into women's football, women's athletics. So you guys, if you want to invest, if you want to become owners, if you want to be active investors and shape the sport, listen, the game is growing because of investment. And there's a lot of men now, I think Giorgio Chiellini is another one. He joined the investment group I'm part of. Obviously, Alexis Ohanian, Juan Mata is another guy that has got involved. Gary Neville, so get involved, guys. Get your wallets out.

We'll have a whip around. I'm going to finish by asking one question of each of you. What can the game do at a club level, at a player level, at a fan level? What is the one thing you'd like to see be done in raising the impacts of this game, whatever those impacts may look like? Rishir, I'm going to put you on the spot and come to you first. The others have a couple of minutes just to think about it. What's that one thing that football clubs, that institutions can do in terms of driving the goals of, the greater goals of the game?

I think for me it's a, it feels like a very simple answer. It's about accountability. Show up, be present, be there. What is important to your supporters should therefore then be important to the football club and that's something that we are really proud of. At Liverpool, we know that our supporters hold us to a higher regard, probably than other football clubs. Thankfully, our most senior leaders, me, my team, and many, many colleagues, all colleagues across the club, see that as an opportunity to do the right thing. So for me, it's all about accountability, to lean into it, own it, go and be the first. Don't just be the first, but also be the one who's ever present as well.

I get that. So, Lucas, I'm going to come to you. Same question from a fan perspective. get clubs driving initiatives in the way that they do across a broad spectrum of any number of issues. From a fan perspective, how does a fan go from the club setting that example to it being meaningful work on the ground, outside of the stadiums, away from match days?

I would go like, I think a lot of clubs, they have fantastic ideas, but I think what's missed a little bit is the togetherness. I think they should forget the game inside the pitch, you know, that we are all looking to win and beat the rivals. And again, I come back to the power of football. And if all these clubs get together to the same cause, you know, and engage, I think that's the key for us to change. You know, I think that's what is missing. Liverpool is one of the clubs that, you know, is on it, but I think we need a lot more.

And, Andy, I'll finish with you. What's our responsibility as players in that same quest?

I think the players have responsibility, as Rishi was saying, to bring awareness and give a voice to issues that they care about. And that's a broad spectrum of issues across football. It could be anti-racism. In my world, it's ending violence against women and girls. It's pertinent because of, obviously, you know, women's football and that crossover between, you know, women on the pitch and women in their daily lives. I feel I have a responsibility in my work, whether it's with the UN or with other charities like Refuge, to bring awareness to those issues, difficult conversations. But, you know, some of us players, we have bigger platforms than the clubs themselves, right? You know, huge social media followings. You know, the, the fans hang on our every word, and so I think it's really important to, to sort of have those difficult conversations and, uh, bring awareness and, and, and try and drive change as much as possible.

Lady, gents, thank you very much for, for your perspective, for starting that con, these conversations that, that we need to have. I, I will, I will close by saying I've always been a believer, I'm biased, I've always been a believer in this game, what it represents, the impacts it can have. Those impacts are driven by investment to the game at the highest level, investment at every single level, whether it's buying a ball and a pair of cleats for, young lady in your community, whatever that may be, this game represents the best of who we are. While the focus will always be on match days, I think clubs are built on community and we continue to drive the best in who those communities are. Thank you very much for your conversation. Thank you very much for your air.

Hello, hello. Welcome back to the SDG Media Zone. Our next session is about to start. Please take your seats and quiet down. So welcome back to the SDG Media Zone. We are live from UN headquarters here during the General Assembly. I'm happy to introduce the next panel, and they're going to talk about disarmament and how we can protect our communities. I'm going to hand it over to the moderator. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here for the SDG Media Zone. To kick off the discussion today, we're going to start with a trailer for a new film. It's titled 80 is the most dangerous anniversary. It's directed by Frank Chi, who will who joins us today. Thank you.

There are worrying signs that the world is entering into a new nuclear arms race.

Nuclear weapons used to have a certain sort of taboo about them.

That taboo is just disappearing.

States are threatening to return to testing.

If one state tests, others would.

After 80 years, we lose generational memory.

80 years after Hiroshima, survivors wonder whether the world has learned anything from what happened here.

Tina, if you go back 80 years in your family tree, what's the first thing you see?

I see the little village I was raised in. It was like an Eden.

Howard, if I ask you to go back 80 years in time, what do you see?

I see my grandmother saying, "Get off the wolf." But these kinds of memories are fading.

And memorials to the past are starting to lose their power.

What will happen when we're all gone?

So thank you so much for that, Frank. So I hope that this film will ground today's discussion in what matters most when we're talking about nuclear weapons, and that is the human toll. I'm Spencer Cohen, and I'm a journalist at the New York Times on the opinion page, and we have a fantastic panel for you. We have Ms. Izumi Nakamitsu, the Undersecretary General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs. We have Frank Chi, the director of the film, which you just saw the trailer for, 80th is the most dangerous anniversary. He's an Emmy award-winning filmmaker. And we have Liana Liu, you know, the, you know, yes, she's a Cypriot peacebuilder and recent participant in UNODA's Youth Leader Fund for a World Without Nuclear Weapons program. So to kick things off, I want to start with the Under Secretary General. So the world is entering a new nuclear age, yet the number of Avon survivors and fallout survivors is dwindling. How will this loss of memory change the way states talk and think about nuclear weapons? How did stories like theirs, like the ones we see in this film, serve as a guardrail against nuclear war since the dawn of the atomic age?

Well, thank you very much. Just call me Izumi. I'm just one of those people who want to make sure that the memory will be kept, and then we create a new momentum to make sure that we will go back towards the path of eliminating nuclear weapons. Now, I think the hibakushas, who are the survivors of atomic bombings, And then, um, a lot of, uh, survivors of nuclear testings, whether they're from Kazakhstan or from the Pacific Islands, uh, I think they have actually given us a real sort of inspirations, uh, uh, a real strong passion and understanding why we need to work on this. That's the power of memory, the story. We believe in the storytelling, the importance of it, because it empowers us and it gives us energy. I mean, if I could just put my own story, My late father was born in Kumamoto, which is the prefecture just next to Nagasaki. And when he was 15 years old, he saw the mushroom cloud from Nagasaki, from his own town. And I grew up listening to those stories. My late mother was born in Nagasaki. By the time of the atomic bombing, she had already moved out of the city, but she had many people, she knew many people who actually perished because of the atomic bombings. If you actually grew up with these kinds of stories, it gives you something additional to all the kind of policy discussions that I'm involved in, many of the conference rooms, discussions and negotiations that I'm involved in. That's what the utility of the story and the memories. We are now going to lose very soon the direct stories that I was benefiting when I was growing up. So we need to make sure that it will be kept and it will continue to inspire younger people who will become the next generation a new generation of peace builders and nuclear abolition movement advocates, et cetera. So that's why we are here as the United Nations, starting all these flagship activities, youth for disarmament and youth leadership for a world free of nuclear weapons.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing that makes you understand the toll of these weapons like sitting across from a survivor and hearing these. I mean, Frank, I mean, this phenomenal film, I mean, you brought together a survivor from Hiroshima and a sort of downwind survivor from the United States. And I thought it was very compelling to put these two stories together. I mean, for two countries that have had such different relationships in nuclear weapons over 80 years. I guess I just sort of wanted to understand, I mean, what came to the forefront when you put these stories together? I mean, sort of, I mean, and sort of, were you worried anything distinct would be lost and sort of, I mean, it's such a compelling film. I just want to understand. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

And, you know, I think.

The way I look at my role as a storyteller is to bring stories that you might not put together in your head immediately and see if we can find common ground, right? That is the essence of storytelling. It's the essence of cultural diplomacy, which is if a film is done well, that's what it can be used for. I have always been like really overwhelmed by the testimony of the hibakusha. But I think for me, when I encountered Howard's story, the Hiroshima survivor that you see in the film, it It allowed me to connect with it because he was telling it in such a compelling way that I think made every single audience member, no matter your background, really like, you know, have a, have a deep, uh, connection to it. And he's 88 years old, right? And this is the reason why it's called 80 is the most dangerous anniversary, something that he says, during the process of making this film, I originally wanted to call this film the hibakusha and the downwinder. And during the process of making this film, we realized that not many people know what those words mean. And that's the urgency of this story. 80 years is generational memory, it's the end of generational memory. We, in this age, cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past. So if we lose touch with the connection of people who lived through that era, then we are not doing a service to the urgency of this moment. So I'm really grateful for both Howard and for Tina, who is the downwinder represented in this film, who talk about generations. She's had five generations of family members who's dealt with cancer since the Trinity test. To bring these two stories together And I know you see them side by side, but in the film, we actually bring them in conversation and we hear them talk about their commonalities. That's the kind of storytelling that as people who care about memory and cultural diplomacy, we should all be working towards.

Thank you. No, I mean, that's really end of generational memory. I mean, and I think the question, what comes next? And I mean, then that's the next generation. And so, I mean, I guess, I mean, young people like us, I mean, we're inheriting a world where sort of nuclear risk is growing, stockpiles in some countries are starting to grow, yet nuclear war and testing, I mean, it feels so far in the past. I mean, it's something we sort of often see in black and white or sort of see in the history books. I mean, how can we make it feel urgent again? I mean, how can we sort of make nuclear war and the danger feel urgent to a generation that sort of didn't grow up with nuclear fear sort of plastered into their mind, at least until recently.

Thank you. I would like to answer from the perspective of participating in the YLF program. And with 50 other youth, I had the opportunity to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And we're all moved by what we saw on the ground. And by the end of the program, we were all left with the same question. How on earth are we going to transmit to the other young people in our countries what we saw on the ground? And talking with the other YLFers from countries in conflict, we realized that already nuclear weapons, just by existing, are impacting the conflicts in our countries. In my country, Cyprus, we still have thousands of active landmines. And in other conflicts around the world, we see weapons such as grenades. explosives and even machine guns, destroying lives. And officially we have a word for these weapons. We call these weapons conventional weapons. And what makes them conventional is the fact that they're non-nuclear weapons. So just by existing, nuclear weapons are legitimizing and normalizing the use of so-called conventional weapons that kill people every single day. And this is a vicious circle. because at the same time the fact that so-called conventional weapons are being used everywhere with impunity means that there is at the very least a plausible excuse that nuclear Advocates can use to say that we need nuclear deterrence in order to have some level of security as a country so as a generation how do we feel the nuclear urgency We do it by understanding that nuclear weapons are already deeply entrenching us deeper into the conflicts in our countries.

Thank you so much. And I guess I'm Izumi. I mean, I think I'm curious about the role of the UN and of UNODA. I mean, the UN is now undertaking the first major scientific study on the effects of nuclear war in some 40 years. The results are expected next year. I guess sort of there's a gap in public understanding. I mean, in terms of nuclear war, in terms of the catastrophic effects, I mean, it feels so abstract. I mean, what do people still fail to sort of understand about the consequences? And I guess, how can this panel, how can the results of this panel, of these sort of these experts help fill this gap?

Right, so this scientific study, it's a member state's decision. We are mandated by the General Assembly to put together the world's top scientists, come from different fields. As you said, the last independent UN scientific study on this issue was issued in 1989. So it's been a while, many things have happened since then, the world has changed, the technology has changed. So the member states felt that we need to now listen to scientists' analysis to make sure that the public and the policymakers understand the impact of nuclear war in today's world. Now, it's going to be a very, I'm so excited that the report will be issued sometime next year, summer, around the summer. And it will address the issues of nuclear war at the local level, regional level, and if I could put it as a planetary level, both direct and indirect impact. Now, the last study during the Cold War, many people came to realize what we call the nuclear winter effect. nuclear war would not be limited to, you know, one particular place, but because of the the the the the cloud, the dust, it will have a global impact. And that really moved the public understanding that led to a lot of momentum. And, you know, in terms of a nuclear disarmament movement this time, because the world has changed so much, you know, they will be the scientists already are looking at both direct health and environment, all these impacts, but also indirect impact and also the impact of a potential scenario of what they call a limited nuclear use. What if 10 nuclear weapons or 20 nuclear weapons were used in a given region, would that be limited to the, would the impact be limited to that particular region? The scientists are already discovering that no, that would not be the case. The impact will be actually cascading and then become a global impact, not just in terms of a health and environmental sort of nuclear radiation impact, but also the world's economy, trade, and governance. The whole system will be disrupted. And I think that is, you know, in the world that we are living in, we are already seeing a lot of impact, negative impact. The Straits of Hormuz is a case in point. What would happen if nuclear weapons are involved in that sort of a context? So, You know, this is going to be a very important contribution, evidence-based, science-based, coming from the world's really top scientists, academic people, and the fact that the member states felt that it is a really important contribution that we need for nuclear weapons policy discussions is also quite an important one. And that's one of the things that the UN member states also can do to move policy debates on the basis of scientific evidence and data.

Thank you, Soma. So a nuclear strike anywhere will impact us all. only a handful of weapons are used or a single weapon, I mean, we will all be impacted. And I guess just to end, I wanted to sort of go back to where we started, again, the survivors. I think we always have to put them at the center of the conversation. I mean, and Frank and Leana, I mean, you both have spent time with survivors, you've had conversations with them. I mean, I guess as that generation sort of is reaching the end of their lives, I mean, what is going to be the hardest to preserve and to pass along, I mean, to the generation beyond ours that did not have that same experience? Frank, if we could start with you.

You know, I think the only thing I could say is like, we just have to tell more stories, right?

If you're a storyteller and you're compelled to retain the memory of a generation that's passing, there's no like silver bullet. You just gotta tell more stories. And for me, the urgency of generational memory ending means that, you know, if the, if we didn't do a good enough job as a species in the 20th century to make people understand what the words hibakusha and downwater means, it's our job in the 21st century to tell as many stories as possible until that education is, is real.

And, you know, I think.

Like if the 20th century made millions of hibakusha and downwinders, it is sort of our obligation in the 21st century to make sure that number stays at zero. And the only way we can do that is through cultural diplomacy, through storytelling, and the kind of world that that kind of story can tell.

Thank you. And Liana, I mean, you spent time in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with survivors. Can you sort of talk a little bit about that and sort of about preserving and passing on those stories?

I think what will be the hardest to preserve is the silence and the silence left behind. Not all hibakusha spoke, but many of them spoke, and because of that, we can hear all the silence left by both those who suffered but chose not to speak and those who died before they were able to choose for themselves. And the biggest privilege of going to Nagasaki and Hiroshima with the wildlife program was the fact that we got the opportunity to realize just how much strength and resilience it takes to rebuild a single life and a single city. And I cannot help but wonder if perhaps this is the reason that as humanity, we seem to have lost our moral conscience when it comes to nuclear weapons, because many people survive, because they did manage to rebuild and because they did have the resilience. Are we overestimating human resilience and at the same time underestimating how much these weapons are able to function exactly as we designed them to? So what we should be afraid of is not that we forget the survivors of both atomic bombs and atomic tests, but that we forget and we make their stories into vague narratives about resilience and rebuilding without the wider context. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much. I mean, I really thank you so much all for coming to this panel. I mean, thank you three for this great panel. I think we'll end it there. Well, thank you.

Hello, hello. How's everyone doing? Energy here. Beautiful day in New York.

Yes. If you know me, as most of you don't, I always bring the energy. So just saying. My name is Shira Lazar. I'm the founder and CEO of What's Trending. We're a digital media brand and publisher covering what's trending on social media. I'm a content creator and I also founded the organization Creators for Mental Health, bringing wellbeing tools to the creator economy and our communities. And I also have a podcast, season two soon coming out, called "The AI Download," looking at the future of AI and culture. So this conversation definitely makes sense for me and everyone here today. What I love about this is that we're moving from, of course, awareness to trust. in the age of AI especially. And I actually just released a list called the Affinity List, which looked at how the most impactful creators are building more community, not necessarily by scale, but by depth and going deeper. So lived experience and expertise are going to become the new currency, which is very exciting. And it's also exciting for changemakers, I think, and everyone here today.

So with that, I want to introduce our panelists.

We've got Zenaida Yasacama. Zenaida, Kichwa leader, executive director of Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance, the largest ever indigenous led Amazon basin conservation initiative. Zenaida, thank you so much for being here. Give it up for Zenaida. Give her a little clap, yes. Alyssa Sherer, who's the programs lead at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Alyssa, give Alyssa a round of applause. Ivy Shybar, Vice President of Partnerships at Peak Action. Ivy. And Justin Markel, Director of Media at the Public Foundation. Thank you, Justin. Okay, as we get, oh my God, that was five minutes. Okay, let's get into this. We're gonna first talk about trust and who gets to tell the story, especially this day and age. I'm gonna start with you, Zenaida, because you are all about narrative sovereignty and community voice, especially with the work you do. Who do we trust to tell the story, especially now with AI and technology?

Muy buenas tardes, gracias por este espacio. Good evening. Thank you for this space in the name of Amazon Sacred Headwater Alliance. So the work that we do is based in the Amazon region of both Ecuador and Peru. Bueno, yendo al tema, vivimos en una era de desinformación. So getting to the point, we live in an era of disinformation. Donde la era digital puede manipular muchos relatos nuestros y construir diferentes realidades. where the digital narrative can manipulate these narratives and construct alternative realities. That is why trust depends on our ability to measure stories against reality. Bueno, las verdaderas o las realidades depende también de quiénes cuentan y de quiénes hablan a través de cómo vivimos en el territorio. Para los pueblos indígenas, las condiciones para contar esa realidad se están reduciendo. But for Indigenous peoples, the conditions for telling that reality are shrinking. Our rights are being questioned, criminalized, criminalization is on the rise, and the guarantees that allow us to defend our territories are weakening. Entonces, ¿en quién confiamos para contar esta verdadera historia? ¿En quienes viven esta realidad? La conocen y tienen el derecho de contar desde su voz propia. Por eso necesitamos garantizar las condiciones para que los pueblos puedan contar sus propias historias y ser escuchados en diferentes espacios. Those who live that reality, who know it, and who have the right to tell it in their own voice. That is why we must guarantee the conditions for people to tell their own stories and be heard. Y nuestra historia es clara. Y la Amazonía es una zona de vida fundamental para enfrentar las múltiples crisis que vivimos y protegerlas no es solamente una causa indígena, sino más bien es una responsabilidad colectiva y de todos. And our story is clear. The Amazon is a vital zone of life for confronting the multiple crises that we are living through. Protecting it is not only an indigenous cause. It is a collective responsibility.

Thank you so much for that. Now, making sure the people experiencing what they're going through and on the ground floor of that is so important. And both of you are also doing that with data. Well, at the School of Public Health that you work at, Alyssa, and I've worked with them with their creator program, everything is very data backed. How are you looking at the idea of trust in terms of storytelling?

Yeah, absolutely. So we know that the people that people trust to tell them stories are those that they see as credible and relatable. So credible in the sense that they either have relevant life experiences or education on a topic or both. And then relatable in the sense that people, when they're hearing stories, want to hear their experiences and their values reflected back to them. And for billions of people around the world, those trusted messengers have become content creators. Content creators have done an amazing job building trust and relationships with communities at a time when trust in institutions is declining. And institutions like the one that I work at, Harvard Chan, still have a role to play. What we do very well is generate evidence through years of careful data gathering and analysis. But what we haven't historically done well is build coalitions with groups that are bringing other strengths, like content creators, that are doing an amazing job to make information accessible, relatable, engaging. So that's the idea behind the creator program that I work at at Harvard Chan, where we work to connect creators and scientists to evidence based resources and community building opportunities with scientists and other creators. And that goes kind of back to, we are very rooted in a similar idea that the people that are closest to the stories, the ones that are experiencing them, are the ones who should tell their stories. But institutions can do a good job of providing them with access to the best available evidence so that they can use that evidence to inform their communities.

Great work and so important as well. And then Ivy, how are you doing that within your campaigns too?

So at Peak Action, our goal is to change the conversation around climate to be solutions focused. And what we've seen in our experience is when you want to connect with humans, it's the human story that works. So similar to what my colleagues have mentioned, when you combine that human lived experience with the data, that's when you start to see real engagement and not just awareness as our title is, but action. So an example, we work with a creator called Teal Leto, better known online as Western Water Girl. She's based in the American West and makes the very complex, serious water issues happening in the American West very accessible and engaging to her audience. Those are the sorts of people that we want to try and find and highlight because they already are the trusted messengers. Making sure you're getting the budget to do it so those people can get paid,

Absolutely. That is important. Equity is important in all of this, even with social impact. Let's go from the knowledge, the lived experience, Justin, to the action, how we create it, especially with what you're doing.

Action, very important. I think that building on what was said here, there is authenticity, lived experience, and trust, and action is so.

Important.

Certainly one of the more.

Difficult pieces to sustain, I think that, through the work that we do at Public, we're looking to help purpose-driven organizations all across the board from governments, non-profits, even media companies. to look at data in a way that helps to drive action, that is mapping back to kind of what you said in a way where we're using real-time analytics to understand what people actually care about and helping messages to get to those people about things that matter, global issues, really all across the board from nature to food to civic engagement and so forth. So, I mean, the other thing I would say that I've learned around action is community design and especially thinking about content, building on what you're talking about with creators and many of the experience from folks on stage here about creators is user generated content and empowerment to look at micro communities and to look at driving participatory action frameworks that get people engaged, not just to look at a piece of content, but to want to actually then Make lifestyle changes, make behavior changes. I'd be super curious to hear more about what you have to say about that and the work you're doing. But yeah, I think that that is, you know, there's so much value that can come, that can get unlocked from audiences to become more, you know, more active rather than passive. And I think that it's up to those who have earned trust, whether it's institutions or creators, and all of the partners of those organizations to really figure out new ways to drive and sustain that kind of action in a meaningful way that, yeah, that has the right incentive design there.

So we don't have a lot of time.

Left, but when we talk about technological changes and of course, artificial intelligence, I want to go to Zenaida of How does the human intelligence and from your perspective where you're at, how do we blend that with artificial intelligence? Is that possible? Where does she see the future of storytelling and technology to the action based on her goals as well?

Wealth lies in diversity. The Amazon, one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, teaches us that diversity is sustainable and wealth, and that also applies to the way we communicate. Technology plays a fundamental role, but it must coexist with other media, such as community radio, which remains essential for many of our territories. So who has the power to define kind of that merge that you're talking about and what's coming next? In the fondo, una pregunta politica, como los pueblos indigenas tenemos un papel fundamental. no solo como actores sociales y políticos, sino también como pueblos que hemos habitado, cuidado a nuestros territorios por milenios y que somos portadores de conocimiento y soluciones para preservar la vida como la que conocemos. At its core, that is a political question in a way. As indigenous peoples, we have a fundamental role to play, not only as social and political factors or actors, but also as peoples who have inhabited and cared for our territories for millennia and who carry knowledge and solutions to preserve life as we know it. en un contexto en el que enfrentamos no solamente los riesgos que se presentan o se asocian a las nuevas tecnologías, sino también guerras crecientes y agendas, incluso en espacios como este, que se promueven acciones que ponen en riesgo a la vida. This is especially relevant in a context where we face not only the risks associated with new technologies, but also escalating wars and agendas that even in spaces like this one can put our lives at risk. Because the future that we are building should not only be more technologically advanced, it should also be more just. Because the future we are building must not only be more technological or more technologically advanced, it must also be more just, more diverse, and more connected to life.

Yes.

Thank you. To wrap it up. Again, this is a quickie. We dove in quickly. But final takeaways from each of you in terms of the future of AI storytelling and building trust towards action. I'll go to you, Alyssa, and then the rest of you.

Yeah. Final thought, if we want people to have access to information, we need to start sharing decision making with the community leaders that people already trust. If we want people to act, we need to start sharing people power with the people that are already trusted in community.

And with Harvard, because I'm working with them as well, the Chan School of Public Health, bringing in creators as advisors and building the curriculum with you is really important. It could look performative, but actually like it is the challenge of how can you blend in community members from the spaces you're trying to impact into the beginnings and the foundation of these programs before you're going off before you get the money, right? So that you're building together and they're part of that. And that's a lot of the work that I'm also doing with the school and Alyssa and Amanda over there. So yeah, thank you for being here. Anything else you want to say before we leave? Anything you're working on or you all are excited about?

Yes, yeah. I mean, we have another creator summit that's coming up that you'll be at that we're extremely excited about, where we're going to be having conversations around how creators can move us towards a world where health is a right for everybody. So we hope that you will check us out on LinkedIn or social media. We'll definitely be posting stuff about the summit, and it's going to be very exciting. And we're excited for you to see us and share.

What about you, the future, AI, storytelling, and action?

I'm going to leave it with all of you. I think one of the most important things to remember is that we're all trusted messengers to certain people in our lives. And so the more you can have those climate and other tough conversations with your friends and family, that in itself is also a climate solution and one that's especially relevant in the AI era.

I love that you say that because I think we think about scale again and like going viral when we forget the impact of just what we can do in our day-to-day lives and the small actions that lead to bigger leaps.

Absolutely.

Don't forget about those while you're trying to go viral and then doing all the other not so good stuff along the way. Justin.

My parting thought is definitely around shared power. Alyssa talked about power and I've been inspired by that concept for many years now. And I think as things move forward, one of the biggest words that I'm sure many of us would agree upon that's coming up in AI adjacent spaces is agency and in addition to that access. So agency being, you know, the power that each of us vest, you know, as it relates to autonomy and guiding paths with technology and perhaps without as well. But in this context, I would say that we need to be really vested in terms of the systems that we're building and the technologies that are influencing us and how we're influencing them. And now is the time to do that because things are moving very quickly. And we all know that there's a time and place where it becomes much more difficult to keep up when things are moving that fast. So rather than thinking about defensive mechanisms, let's not play defense, let's play offense, let's do it right now.

And then one last word before we go. And we do need to wrap.

But I'm excited for one last word from you. I just want to give a message for those who are here in front of us and then also for those who are listening from afar. What future do we want? So at Amazon Sacred Headwaters, we are trying to promote and understand what this future means with indigenous knowledge and being able to promote these stories within the technology.

A lot of us would love to help you. So thanks to you and everyone else for being here today. And thanks to all of you for watching and being here. Have a great rest of your day and give it up for our amazing panelists and speakers. Be sure to follow everyone, tag us in pictures. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much for having us.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon again, SDG Media Zone. We're bringing this year's version of the SDG Media Zone to a close. And as we opened this year's SDG Media Zone, we marked 10 years of impact. We've been talking about that all week. And as we wrap up this 11th session, our deepest thanks go to the Public Foundation. Simply put, Public, this has not happened without you. Sergio, Carrie, Megan, the entire Public team, there are so many people that have been integral to this thing. For 11 years, your partnership has helped us amplify the Sustainable Development Goals and brought dynamic conversations on SDG solutions outside of these UN walls, where we need to take it. We need all this outside of the UN. We've had voices of world leaders, grassroots activists, civil society, UN agencies, of course, private sector innovators, goodwill ambassadors, and messengers of peace straight to a global audience. And this year, we just had so... many creators influencers doing amazing things out there and hearing from those folks is critical. We should all be part of a big family trying to drive positive change and every year we've done more of that. So let's give the public team a big round of applause for all the effort The SDG Media Zone is the UN's primary public facing platform during the UN General Assembly, but behind the scenes, what you see on the screen is an incredible operational engine. It takes a massive effort to pull this off, driven by teams who work tirelessly behind the scenes. I'd like to recognize them today. To the production team, the team making the magic happen every morning, getting this all together, getting this up, problem solving setups on the spot, AV, lights, the LDD screen, and much, much I've been impressed by your dedication and professionalism throughout the week. And to put it plainly, you've just been fun and amazing to work with. It's just been great. So thank you. To Microsoft, who joined us in this space this year, highlighting the transformative power of AI. I know many of you have been to the display area over there. Thanks to all of you being back there. You know, we're all trying to figure out this AI stuff and thinking about how AI does good, helps us all work through the situations in a positive way, has been fantastic. Thank you for being a partner this time. And to our media partners and SDG Media Compact members who moderated and were parts of these conversations all week. BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Conde Nast, The New York Times, Nation Media Group, CGTN America, ESPN, Climate Central, The Feminist, Arab News, DW, and actually many more. I mean, it's just been an incredible list. I mean, to have those media partners come in and be a part of this just expands our reach to such a degree. It makes it really get the SDG message out there across the world and in major publications. So that's been fantastic. Of course, to our speakers and panelists, thank you for grounding these high level topics in real human stories, urgency and action. The point of the SDG Media Zone is to amplify voices such as yours, and we're truly grateful that you shared all of your stories with us. And we hope you enjoyed your experience as well. We try and make this fun, light, exciting in this space, make sure that everyone enjoys their time here, and we hope that you've all done that because we certainly have enjoyed having you here. And of course, our own UN, UN Department of Global Communications. A lot of folks from different parts of the department have made this happen. The programming team built an incredible slate of nearly 50 sessions. Imagine that, 50 sessions in five days. That's a tough schedule to put together. Watching this program evolve over the last few months through endless schedule shifts and complex requests was a masterclass really in creative problem solving. And, you know, Martin and Alex, you make the impossible possible. To UNTV colleagues for directing each session. I mean, that's a big, big lift as well. The UN Web TV for your technical expertise in making sure we went out live and on demand on webtv.un.org. This will all be archived, so any session you missed, you can go back and find it in the SDG Media Zone site. It's all there, and I know I am going to go back because we've all been working, the UN teams. We've all been behind the scenes. We need to go back and watch some of these amazing conversations. I know that I'm going to be sure to do. The web team also helped us with the website, of course, which makes it live and accessible and easy to deal with. So thanks to all of you. To our social media team, our co-collaborators in this space, they've been back in the corner with UNGA 81, 8.1 seconds of hope. social media space. You've been amazing. You help us get the word out, make sure that people see it so that they can come directly to watch the entire session after they get the bits and pieces off of social media. We also have amazing interns and volunteers. Our entire team is not assigned and dedicated to this space. We ask people to put their hands up and come and be a part of this so that, one, we have the entire department involved, but people show up and just say, "I want to be a part of this. I want to work hard. I want to be a part of the General Assembly Week." So all of the interns and the volunteers who are part of us, thank you to all of you as well. And this stage, it's really proof of what happens when partnership meets purpose, and we hope that we're we're going to be part of one big family. So to everyone in front of the camera, behind the scenes, in the control room, and to all of you who joined us here in person in this room, and who joined us live on Web TV around the world, thanks to all of you who be a part of this. And with that, you've made this an unqualified success. Let's all get ready to do it again next year. Thank you.