Dear Abdulkarim While I agree with you that there are surely situations similar to that of Daniel within At-Large, many do not have the same level of responsibility to the work of At-Large as he does. As one of my leadership team, I am concerned about his circumstances, regardless of how he came upon them. It was his concern for his ability to meet his obligations to his leadership role which caused me to mention his unusual predicament. I only found out about where he was and his situation yesterday. Even when he should be thinking about himself, he was informing me as to why he might not be able to fulfil his obligations to the O&E team for an unknown timeframe. It was extreme bad luck that he was not able to leave the country at the conclusion of the leadership event, especially in a country that I believe has very poorly managed its covid situation. I sympathise with anyone who ever finds themselves in a situation such as this. If there is any way that our community can help relieve Daniel's situation until his country's embassy can assist his return to Uganda, then Im happy to do my bit. We cant do this for everyone, but for someone like Daniel who has volunteered a lot of personal time towards work within At-Large as well as in cross-community activities for several years, he deserves my support even if in this small way, and gratefully with the support of other like-minded people. If you would like to help too, that is fine. If not, then that is fine as well. We all do what is important to us and as much or as little as we can. The same will have to go for our work within ICANN. Regards and keep well Maureen On Fri, 8 May 2020, 1:36 pm ABDULKARIM AYOPO OLOYEDE, < oloyede.aa@unilorin.edu.ng> wrote:
Dear Maureen, I greatly sympathise with Daniel on this issue you shared and I totally agree with your approach of setting up a welfare team and the Gofundme. However, I do not understand why you decided to include it in your email to Leon. His travel is clearly not related to the challenges being faced by the community as a result of having what should have been a face to face meeting going online. Your email was saying you removed a message cos it is not ICANN related but yet it included an issue which is clearly not ICANN related. The unrelated issue you raised has clearly overshadowed the other critical issue. In fact, it took the most significant part of the mail. What was supposed to be the main point in the mail is now being relegated to paragraph 3. In as much as I sympathise with Daniel, I do not see the reason why a private issue was now explicitly discussed in an email to Leon and the community. There are lots of people around the world in a similar situation and I can't understand and I don't clearly want to guess why you are making Daniel's case look worse than it is or as an example for the mailing list. I have lots of friends and even family members stranded as a result of the unexpected shutdown. We all faced challenges in our private lives or because of the unexpected shut down of the world and I believe this should remain private except if ICANN is now a social club.
I also agree with Remmy Nweke that RALO leaders should also take up the issues relating to challenges the community is facing in regards to having an online meeting. This is because they are closer to the community and It took Leon to raise it specifically before it became a serious issue for the ALAC when clearly we should not have waited this long. It has been raised by several people before now but we didn't seams to listen or take it seriously.
AK
On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 6:49 PM Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Leon
Here is the discussion that arose out of the request from the ALAC meeting. I am so grateful that the community restricted their comments to those that were most thoughtful and considerate of ICANN's situation while also taking into account some of the hardship issues experienced by our volunteers at this time. I forward all the emails received on the topic (I had one instance where the email was on another topic and once revealed, the sender asked for it to be removed).
One case which only very recently came to my attention was Daniel Nanghaka who was in the US attending an AMEX Leadership course in Washington DC when the flights out of US were grounded and he could not return to Uganda. He has been staying with friends in Massachusetts but living very frugally on his limited resources. Even though he has tried, his contacts with the Uganda Embassy in Washington DC have not been responded to (as of yesterday) and neither has AMEX been of any real assistance to his plight. I have suggested that he persist and if possible return to Washington DC to get his government's support directly. Fortunately he is still within scope of his current visa, but who knows how long will he have to remain in a foreign country without any resources? Daniel hadn't raised his situation with us because his reason for being there was not directly related to ICANN, except that *he is worried *that he may not be able to participate in his meetings because internet connection is expensive and it is draining what little resources he has at the moment, even to take his own O&E meetings. This is an extreme case but a real live situation for one of our leadership team.
The cost of internet and the loss of jobs especially for those in developing countries will make ICANN's work of less priority, especially when they have to worry more about how to feed and care for their families in situations where the pandemic is still rabid, and it is the impoverished areas that are being hardest hit. While I know that ICANN cannot save the world, it saddens me to know what some of our hardest-working volunteers are experiencing in their real worlds... and yet at the same time there is still a flow of even more meetings than before, even within At-Large, with an expectation of more volunteer input into issues that ICANN has to resolve. All I can say is that the longer this situation exists, the greater the chance of those voices that we have been working really hard to encourage to join our discussions, will disappear and our multistakeholder model will be truly lost. But what can ICANN do and what more can we do as volunteers who are already stretched within our own bubbles just to keep ourselves safe? This is our dilemma.
Regards Maureen
Forwarded Conversation Subject: Coping with active participation in At-Large during COVID-19 ------------------------
From: Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com> Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 9:58 AM To: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Dear At-Large Community
In all our recent ICANN meetings, the Board and the senior staff have been very mindful of the difficulties that are being experienced by the volunteer community of At-Large during this pandemic and its impact on their ability to participate as regularly as they used to.
During his intervention in the ALAC meeting on 28 April, the At-Large appointed Board member, Leon Sanchez, raised his ongoing concerns and asked the 70+ participants at the meeting how ICANN might be able to help volunteers to continue with their active involvement in the work of At-Large and contributing to the bigger picture work of ICANN.
Because he has requested practical and constructive suggestions about how ICANN may be able to assist, I am putting this message out to those who also already attend online meetings and actively participate and engage, even under really trying personal circumstances. I am willing to pass on your suggestions to Leon, who will in turn take these to the Board for their consideration.
*Please respond only to this thread* before 7 May, so that the full account can be passed on to Leon. I look forward to your thoughtful contributions to this matter.
Regards Maureen ALAC Chair
---------- From: Glenn McKnight <mcknight.glenn@gmail.com> Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 10:22 AM To: Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com> Cc: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Thanks Maureen As you know this is an issue I brought up in the ALT PLUS call a week before the ZOOM call this week with Leon, at that time I interfaced with Leon on the dire straits that some people are facing during this pandemic situation and that many folks are unwilling to step forward and publicly come to the table with a "cap in their hands"
We are facing a 4% drop in the world economy and this means a depression much worse than the Great Depression. Also this Covid-19 may see a serious second and third wave resulting in many more deaths and economic disruption. ( shades of the 1918 pandemic that killed 100 million)
I would surmise that we have in the ATLARGE community that many folks are unemployed or underemployed and facing tough times and seriously compounded in countries that don't have any safety net to protect them and help them over the difficult times. Since charity starts at home I suggest ICANN dig into its pockets as ISOC and Mozilla and many others and come up with a financial assistance to those that could really appreciate the support. I suggest that the stipend for the ICANN Meetings to be paid to the ATLARGE members which will cover their internet costs and food costs as they fully participate with the remote meetings. In the cases where people don't want or need this financial support they can simple not apply for the stipend and the financial costs would be reduced. It should be confidential and an optional application process.
In a recent survey of Atlarge members we found a large number of African and small island states with very poor internet access and very high costs for their access to the Internet. This produces a digital divide that needs to be recognized and if not addressed we may loose more members from the community. As recommendations to join more online meetings and join ICANN LEARN webinars its an assumption that we all have fair and equal access and this inequality is enhanced with more reliance on remote participation
Glenn McKnight ICANN NOMCOM 2019-2021 mcknight.glenn@gmail.com Curator for Internet Governance Hub Blog www.internetgovernancehub.blog <http://www.internetgovernancehub.blog> http://toronto.ieee.ca/ IEEE Toronto SIGHT Chair glenn.mcknight@ieee.org skype gmcknight twitter @Inkmedia 289-830 6259 .
----------
From: Remmy Nweke <remmyn@gmail.com> Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 11:20 AM To: Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com> Cc: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Thanks Maureen, This is very thoughtful both of ICANN, ALAC and Leon.
For me, the best possible way to encourage participation should have been:
1. To have data palliative, but it looks cumbersome from ICANN end down to the local service providers.
2. An alternative is to have an aggregated sum approved for e.g. 4 months = USD600; to be given to participants to cushion their data effect paid directly to them (both mobile device and laptop). Thereby easing off at ICANN end and also encouraging participant to optimise the resource to their most essential needs including more data, because some may have purchased data ahead, say two months in a row.
I hope this helps. ____ REMMY NWEKE, mNGE, Lead Consulting Strategist/Group Executive Editor, DigitalSENSE Africa Media [*Multiple-award winning medium*] (DigitalSENSE Business News <http://www.digitalsenseafrica.com.ng/businessnews>; ITREALMS <http://www.itrealms.com.ng>, NaijaAgroNet <http://www.naijaagronet.com.ng>) Block F1, Shop 133 Moyosore Aboderin Plaza, Bolade Junction, Oshodi-Lagos M: 234-8033592762, 8023122558, 8051000475, T: @ITRealms <http://www.twitter.com/ITRealms> Author: A Decade of ICT Reportage in Nigeria <https://www.facebook.com/adecadeofictreportageinnigeria%E2%80%8E>
*2020 Nigeria DigitalSENSE Forum on IG4D & Nigeria IPv6 Roundtable <http://www.digitalsenseafrica.com.ng>* JOIN us!!
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---------- From: <carlosraul@gutierrez.se> Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 11:44 AM To: Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com> Cc: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Thank you Maureen and Léon !
1. We in LACRALO have already adapted our meeting hours to avoid conflicts with working hours as far as possible. Thanks to our Brazilian and Uruguayan friends that's stay up late, the westerners in Mexico in Costa Rica have meeting only after 4pm or so. REQUEST; 1. Can't we do choose two convenient blocks of time over the day so that's global meetings only happen outside of sleeping hours? 2. Can we start using those blocks of time ASAP 3. Can we keep those Blocks for the Kuala Lumpur virtual meeting instead of the local time there? 4. If all of the above is not possible: can we spread the Kuala Lumpur meeting into 2-3 power weekend meetings online?
Seriously, if we are going to spend the next few months on virtual meetings, it makes no sense to use the planning frameworks and time blocks of Face to Face meetings.
Thanks! Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez
---------- From: Vanda Scartezini <vanda@scartezini.org> Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 12:06 PM To: Glenn McKnight <mcknight.glenn@gmail.com>, Maureen Hilyard < maureen.hilyard@gmail.com>
Dear Glenn and Maureen
These thoughts are really relevant when we can see in developing region several medium class persons are struggled to feed their families without work.
Here, as developing country, the government is performing a quite complex operation, providing a 120 – 240 ( widows with children) correspondent USD to 56 millions ( ¼ of our population) of persons and had open up a 26 million of a special bank account to those not having one in the public bank, and will pay such amount during 3 months or even longer depend upon the winter ( even mild one here) season. The amount represents what we call basic basket with food and cleaner and hygienic items for one month of a family of 4. The basic mobile are reduced and energy are sponsored for those families.
Helping people to attend our meetings on line in places where they need to spend too much special nowadays paying internet or even 3G for a volunteer activity, does not see will break ICANN’s finances and certainly will help a lot to keep these relevant community with us.
Thanks for these relevant proposal that I do believe really help the engagement of our community.
We can also help to state who, in our regions, is really in need of help. Some even to feed their families.
Kisses and take care
*Vanda Scartezini*
*Polo Consultores Associados*
*Av. Paulista 1159, cj 1004*
*01311-200- Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil*
*Land Line: +55 11 3266.6253*
*Mobile: + 55 11 98181.1464 *
*Sorry for any typos. *
---------- From: Glenn McKnight <mcknight.glenn@gmail.com> Date: Sat, May 2, 2020 at 4:28 AM To: Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com> Cc: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Greetings
Here is the draft response from* NARALO* . Note we are still working out the logistics of the ideas and its not final . I am sharing it for inspiration purpose. The bold and italic comments are excerpts from ICANN's comments direct from the ICANN page
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-_IO9vxnl2AUyrPE2zcL19UjyDPbl5DQHTLvWxX1...
Supporting the Work of Our Global Community over the Next Few Months: Leveraging Remote Participation
Link to document
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/supporting-the-work-of-our-global-community-...
Facts
-
All ICANN Face to Face meetings on hold to Sept 2020
Reality
-
The Pandemic will likely be worse in the fall according to the CDC comments and likely it will be into 2021. (1) and resulting in no Face to Face meetings during that year
Item One: Remote Participation
ICANN has always embraced remote participation. It is what makes our work accessible to a global community and enables us to get the work done between meetings. COVID-19 has made remote engagement even more crucial, and a very real and practical alternative
Comment
This is a practical solution to keep the community engaged but the devil is in the details. We have a serious digital divide which impacts the ATLARGE community. Since ICANN has Multistakeholderism baked into its DNA it is critical to provide communities with the tools to properly engage. In Canada, especially in the far- north, in the US tribal lands, as well as in rural areas(2), among students(3) and in poor urban communities(4) there is a serious digital divide that makes it next to impossible to participate fully in the meetings. In fact, if there are few participants in such areas, it is not because they don’t want to participate. They simply cannot participate unless their internet accessibility issues are addressed. Although ICANN cannot be responsible for all digital divide issues, it must recognize that these exist and perhaps look for alternative ways to deal with these -- create support groups, reach out locally with low tech methods, build partnerships with national, regional, and local organizations, etc..
Item Two; Leverage Participation Tools
It is more important than ever that we leverage our remote participation tools to continue effectively engaging and supporting our community in the work that needs to be done; at the very least, over the next four months.
Comments
It is not just a matter of online tools ie. Zoom, Adobe, Bluejean etc or accessibility issues, but about the bandwidth required by any or all of them. Moreover, many within At Large have uneven connectivity speeds and others are burdened with very high Internet costs and extremely slow speeds. This combined with the loss of income by many of the participants due to COVID-19 making it harder for them to pay for the extra data needed to participate in the At Large or other ICANN related calls.
Item Three Online Courses/ Webinars
We are working with the community to ensure that high-priority topics for this period are being addressed and are creating new opportunities and training for our stakeholders within At Large to participate. As such, we are looking at facilitating these efforts and adding a variety of additional activities to build capacity, to attract new participants, and to educate, and engage these new participants. These activities will include informative webinars, ICANN Learn modules, lectures, and ICANN Public Meeting readouts.
However, this strategy of engagement is only possible where high-speed Internet access is available and the end-user has the funds to pay for the extra service. We would be interested in learning about any surveys that ICANN LEARN staff have done on connectivity challenges of end-users. A recent informal ATLARGE survey, although having only twenty responses, shows that participants in developing countries have limited bandwidth especially in many parts of Africa and small island states combined with high Internet costs.
General View
In the short run, the participation in the first virtual meeting (Cancun) while having very high participation, should be looked at as a novelty, this will not be the new norm. We do expect that participation in future meetings will drop until the economy gets back on track. Participants do not have the available income to spend on the access needed to actively participate in online meetings. We are at a serious risk of losing valuable volunteers. At Large participants are volunteers and unlike other constituencies, they do this outside their paid jobs and often take a vacation to attend ICANN Meetings.
Our community unlike the other the government or business community do not have the luxury of sponsorship to carry on their volunteerism. Our community has had to dig into their own pockets to pay to participate. If the economy does not pick up we can see a substantial loss of participants from locations we cannot afford to lose. We propose that ICANN recognize the value of these participants and create a special connectivity fund. The process and procedure could be worked out in a simple application and approval process.
Recommendations
-
Provide the stipend to all elected ATLARGE community members -
Provide an opportunity to ALS members to receive an Internet Connectivity voucher to offset their high Internet costs so they can participate. -
ICANN LEARN should conduct a true connectivity survey of all users. -
Improve upon the end-user survey at the end of all ICANN Public webinars to get feedback on participation and connectivity experiences ie. latency, quality etc
Conclusion Under development
Footnotes
1.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecasting-us.html
2.
60% of farmers in the US report very poor Broadband speeds https://api.unitedsoybean.org/uploads/documents/58546-1-ruralbroadband-white... 3.
Students and digital divide https://internetgovernancehub.blog/2020/04/10/when-school-is-online-the-digi... 4.
Poor and Digital Divide
https://internetgovernancehub.blog/2020/04/29/digital-divide-isolates-and-en... 5.
Broadband Infographic
Glenn McKnight ICANN NOMCOM 2019-2021 mcknight.glenn@gmail.com Curator for Internet Governance Hub Blog www.internetgovernancehub.blog <http://www.internetgovernancehub.blog> http://toronto.ieee.ca/ IEEE Toronto SIGHT Chair glenn.mcknight@ieee.org skype gmcknight twitter @Inkmedia 289-830 6259 .
On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 3:59 PM Maureen Hilyard < maureen.hilyard@gmail.com> wrote:
---------- From: Judith Hellerstein <judith@jhellerstein.com> Date: Sat, May 2, 2020 at 3:10 PM To: Glenn McKnight <mcknight.glenn@gmail.com> Cc: Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com>
Hi Glenn, I have more to add but did not get a chance on Friday to put in but will do so tomorrow
Best, Judith
Sent from my iPad judith@jhellerstein.com Skype ID:JudithHellerstein
On May 2, 2020, at 10:29 AM, Glenn McKnight <mcknight.glenn@gmail.com> wrote:
---------- From: Olivier Kouami <olivierkouami@gmail.com> Date: Mon, May 4, 2020 at 12:49 PM To: Glenn McKnight <mcknight.glenn@gmail.com> Cc: Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com>, At Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Hi all. Greetings everyone from Sénégal. +1 @Glen who raised issues that i'm personaly facing in this sad pandemic moment. I Also approve the concrete proposals of Remmy. Most ALSes are certainly on these needs too. Much appreciate if ICANN could make as proposed. Warm regards Olévié
---------- From: Barrack Otieno <otieno.barrack@gmail.com> Date: Mon, May 4, 2020 at 6:02 PM To: Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com> Cc: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Hi Maureen,
My humble and personal take to this is that similar to the fellowship program, we could consider support to community members who dedicate significant time and resources to ICANN's mission by contributing to the work of various supporting organizations and Advisory Commitees and the overall mission of ICANN. It is true engaging in SO/AC work costs valuable time for those whose day job may not necessarily be around the DNS ecosystem. Significant resources are incurred to get online and to have the right tools that can enable meaningful participation and contribution to ICANN's work. I welcome the idea of reimbursing some of the costs incurred on connectivity or any other aspect as may be determined through a suitable process considering the continuous nature of the work we are doing.
Best Regards
-- Barrack O. Otieno +254721325277 +254733206359 Skype: barrack.otieno PGP ID: 0x2611D86A
---------- From: LUKE KAPCHANGA <wanjalaluke1@gmail.com> Date: Tue, May 5, 2020 at 6:41 AM To: Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com>
Thanks Maureen , Glenn has captured what some of go through, if not worse. I am based in rural areas of Kenya. To attend online meetings I depend at times on cyber cafes, which are not very reliable, yet the best option. The COVID 19, has worsened the situation. The proposal to assist us from developing countries is welcome.
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