Young social media creators set to promote green, gender-responsive, inclusive ITU Plenipotentiary
By ITU News
As digital policy-makers prepare to convene in Romania next week, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has set out to bring young people’s voices to the conference.
The upcoming ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, PP-22, is expected to gather around 2,500 representatives from government and industry to shape the world’s ongoing digital transformation.
ITU also wants to reach today’s generation of “digital natives”.
To this end, six young social media creators, one from each world region, have been selected to promote green, gender-responsive, and inclusive themes during the three-week conference.
Each of the six, chosen from more than 80 nominees, will be able to attend plenary sessions, interview delegates, and report on what is happening at PP-22 in their languages and to their own audiences.
The initiative aims to enable these young people to bring unique insights from a high-level UN conference to their online followers.
Let’s meet ITU’s selected social media creators:
From Africa
Sophiyat Sadiq runs Auxilium, a non-profit organisation providing free, high-quality STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education to young girls. As an advisory board member for “STEM-in-a-Box” and the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC”), she assists in creating and spreading STEM education to girls in multiple countries and communities.
From Europe
Lola Olaore is an award-winning speaker, social entrepreneur, and product manager who has worked with leading consulting groups. Taking a keen interest in the convergence of girls’ education with technology and community issues, she founded bloss.m, a social enterprise that equips young women from across the globe to fulfil their potential and thrive.
From the Commonwealth of Independent States
Roman Gojayev is a youth worker, facilitator, and multi-disciplinary artist dedicated to the meaningful participation of young people in society. He is also co-founder of Gender Hub Azerbaijan, a social platform supporting women’s rights, and a member of the ITU-affiliated Generation Connect Visionaries Board. He has implemented national, international, and community-based projects in partnership with several international institutions.
From the Arab States
Seifallah Youssef is a 22-year-old student from Tunisia. A strong believer in the power of data, he studied business intelligence, taught himself how blockchain technology works, and founded his country’s first blockchain club.
From Asia and the Pacific
Muhammad Umair Ali is a youth envoy for ITU’s Generation Connect initiative. He works as a product manager for a Pakistani information-technology firm and strongly believes in the power of technologies and digitalization to reshape people’s lives for good.
From the Americas
Luísa Franco Machado is an advocate whose work focuses on Latin America. She advocates for activism in two main forms: a ‘back-end’ consisting of high-quality research; and the ‘front-end’ involving knowledge mainstreaming and youth empowerment. Her multilingual content has reached more than a million “internauts”, according to Luísa.
The social media creators will attend the second week of PP-22, joining other youth representatives for inter-generational dialogues, engaging in a workshop on meaningful youth engagement, and visiting the Politehnica University of Bucharest.
