Jonethan Lee - International NGOs

Welcome to the episode of Doing Good. I'm here with my buddy, Johnny today, to discuss a little bit about how do we think about doing good in our day-to-day lives and on the show we bring in guests from all kinds of different walks of life and they're exploring their own personal journey on professionally. How do I do good? How do I live a life that feels rewarding and satisfactory to myself? Right? I mean that in the individual context and I think there's so many incredible stories out there in the world that it is probably the most exciting thing for me to be able to hear from other people about how they go about doing that in their day-to-day because each journey is unique, exciting, inspirational, little weird sometimes but let's hope that the weird doesn't come out today with Johnny. But Johnny, hey bud, thank you so much for taking the time on a public holiday to come in, hang out, have a conversation, share your experience. For the efforts of confidentiality we will keep the organization that Johnny works for a little hush-hush because you have to go through a lot of hoops to get this all publicly signed off and approved if we are going to be going around blasting names but what we can say is that Johnny comes from an organization that works at the international level on humanitarian issues and you know fundamentally you know professional side apart Johnny's just a good dude I enjoy hanging out with him and lots of love thanks for being here today but tell us about you man to give us the give the intro for people who don't know you. Andrew thanks for sitting this up and I think it's a great opportunity and happy to be part of this session with you. I mean yeah now I've been the humanitarian space for a few years now originally in the private sector and spent quite a bit of time in the private sector looking at marketing and comms and data getting people to buy stuff they didn't always really need and then I do that. Yeah I mean it's you give some some gratification but then yeah now if I had some personal life experiences and events that kind of made me challenge my view and like okay why am I doing this is there something else I could be doing with my skillset and then kind of test at the water I was able to do some pro bono work around anti-human trafficking and then I'm like okay my skills are valued that there's a lot more need for my skills so I'm like working with these different organizations and then I'm going into that path like how do you make a career out of it so yeah it's like talking to people and like so initiative like yourself doing this I think it's important to be able to talk to like mind people hear their stories because a lot of this is not conventionally told at you know when you're in high school university these are the kind of opportunities you get you're always kind of you know chasing the money you know keeping up with the Joneses but I think there's a lot more to be gained from sharing these stories and talking to people of you know very important experiences. You know that's such a that's such a good point like I'm blown away by the fact that you know when I think about you know 15-20 years ago when I was in school thinking about okay what is it that I'm gonna be doing with my life? Like yeah you're right I would have never thought about going into like that that thing for me would have been oh I could go into humanitarian work like yourself or even like the more kind of grim like dark realities around like anti-trafficking right like that's those are like pretty intense things to think about and you only come about that I mean like what what what triggered that step into that if you don't mind me asking me like because you know how do you even know that that existed? It was actually a recruiter that contacted me saying hey you got all these great digital performance marketing skills this is new agency studying up sponsored by the the local government and they want to start investing in data for good looking at deep tech so they want someone who knows how to run large campaigns across you know different types of platforms and really measure effectiveness and one of the main ones they want to do is anti-human trafficking because the company had partnered with a big tech company and so it was all co-funded and it's like okay let's make this work it's like okay I can get behind this and yeah so I took on that opportunity there that's cool just generally staying curious you know and open to possibilities right because you know if you were if you were working any job before that then someone comes up and says hey you want to get into this anti-human trafficking kind of deal where you apply a skill set that probably you know no one's like if we you know and this is this is part we haven't fully covered yet but you know your skill set in digital marketing storytelling using data using the techniques behind getting the word out there that's that's not necessarily the first thing I think about when I you know someone's gonna say hey let's run a anti-human trafficking program like you know like usually you think you know door busting FBI guys let's go right and you know you forget that there's a whole operation behind you know the core operation that goes into creating a fund a fundamentally effective program at combating these issues right people people just completely miss that side of the equation yeah I feel particularly as as a marketing practitioner and now that I'm in the humanitarian spaces being able to communicate these narratives and educate the general audience of the you know potential dangers and threats that are happening around us so for this particular campaign I was just generally educating not only how to spot the signs of human trafficking so you could use the app and call the number and engage with the local authorities to report it but also the potential victims and the families and friends around these victims of you know how to prevent it you know so yeah yeah a lot of opportunity once you look into the data you understand the mechanisms the type of language that's being used and then you become aware to the the behaviors and then you can tackle that with the right to campaigns it's just such a song-breaking topic right because like this whole this whole space is is something that people don't always pay attention to right you occasionally see a sign in the airport right that's about it but I think this goes to your point about the storytelling right is that the more that you raise the profile of an issue like this then people are aware that there are things happening and that you can take action right because it's it's not just you know I think the whole point of the campaign is usually around like these are the signs to look out for these are things that you can do and it's it's the collective action that's necessary to really address the problem fundamentally exactly exactly because once you understand how the system works and you work with the different authorities or people in your government to really address you know how to prevent it from happening because it is a systematic organization that does this human trafficking so understand the levers and how to you know empower yourself and the people around you to actually take action okay yeah that's that's that's intense but I think there's a lot of translative skills there right like what you're talking about right there is about saying that we have the ability to work within the system and leverage the tools that exist tell me about like your current journey right where you're thinking about like a pretty sizable humanitarian challenge and in your role you are facing a lot of different levers so how how you come to terms with that in terms of all the different things that you pull and then from there like what's causing you stress right now like what what kind of like issues at the core of the humanitarian challenge are are causing the most disruptions for you in terms of effectively addressing the problem that's a tough question man but a big multifaceted very dynamic and very temporal as well because things change from day to day as we address human humanitarian issues I mean right now funding is a huge thing we have a lot of people with a lot of institutional knowledge that being let go and these people sit at that intersection with government private sector and NGOs right and being able to understand the system in that particular environment and a particular time and how to navigate that and make that systemic change is quite an art in itself understanding the local stakeholder and is in the policy understanding the logistics funding financial systems to get something across the line is you know quite a tricky thing particularly if you're in an internationally when you got different languages and different geopolitical priorities right and so if we imagine like so right now you know we have we have a lot of factors that are coming in the play right so you're saying funding has been cut due to a rise in kind of nationalism arise in populism the big orange man as they say you know lots of focus going into turning attention inwards and a international struggle where there are places across the globe facing unique crises that that require a complex organization and the people within it to be able to work effectively across you know so many different variables Now, in your role right now, you are storytelling and you are analyzing data and you're consuming that information and trying to find ways to kind of make it break down the barriers and try to iterate quickly. Tell me about that. In that storytelling journey, what are some of the biggest challenges now that we have issues around AI, digital media, the people who are engaged with it, are these tools that could be used to try to address the funding gap or what's the mindset that you're taking when you're thinking about such a complex story? Yeah, I'm glad you mention about AI because there's quite a hot topic right now. Probably we'll be able to rest our lives. Yeah, that is quite the paradigm shift. I mean, I've been privy enough to go through the internet age during through social media and seeing how the narratives are built around that and how the technology inevitably gets used. My concern, I guess, deep down is how AI will be used because the decision making and the automation, particularly with AI agents, is going to happen at break-knit speed that we aren't individually as humans can be able to monitor and ensure the decisions being made are grounded in representative data. So when we're working in at such a large scale, when you're working with different organizations, at different levels, country-regional levels, you want to make sure that data is valid. Sometimes people can't get to the certain places to do the proper surveying and to get the right type of numbers. Yeah. Then those people don't get counted into the decision, so you're going to have innate decision bias. So when you're working at such a dynamic place and people's lives are on the line, you do have a lot of pressure to respond faster to get decisions across the line because there's a certain urgency to it. But if these decisions are going to be perpetuated by AI technologies and the technology itself is built on machine learning models that haven't taken the account of local factors, then you're going to always have this perpetual decision bias. So I guess in pragmatic terms, we're thinking about essentially if an AI is developed in Silicon Valley and most of the data is shaped off of Western data behavior, like me on my phone, scrolling through TikTok, whoo, right, and looking at all the content, right? That shapes the algorithm of TikTok. And in the same way that we look at the AI models that are trained now using ShadGbT and etc, the whole world right now is paying for their subscriptions to these models and those data sets inform that model. And so what you're saying is that in the AI space when we think about a humanitarian crisis, a lot of these places are pretty frickin rough, right? So are they necessarily being included in that data process to be part of the conversation? So that's where we're at the moment. We've got the documentation, the strategy, the policies, the UN has released some documents around that. And it's aware. We're aware of it and it's up to people to create those data sets to make them available. I have quite a few colleagues in the global software creating linguistic dictionaries with the different dialects. So the models can see it, understand and translate it as effectively as possible. It's good to see technology hubs popping up around the world where they can also leverage the technology at hand to make their own solutions as well. Now how they talk to each other, they'll be quite interesting. But I think now that technology and information is a lot more scalable and arguably more accessible, I'm hoping to see more representation as information has become more arguably democratized. I'm going to play a little devil's advocate. I'm going to be a little skeptical here. One of the things that I'm a little concerned about, right, you earlier you mentioned that there's international funding cuts going out to organizations that cut across boundaries. You can think of any international organization and right now they're getting affected by this rising front of pushing towards the local issue. Really what that means is just right now Western nations in the global north are consolidating their position. Who's going to invest in that technology diffusion if the international organizations can't afford it? What's going to happen there? Who's driving this investment? One of the things that I feel about that I struggle with with international humanitarian organizations, this is not to poo them. I get what they're doing and we're going to really hard problem is how do you continue to fund and invest in infrastructure when infrastructure feels so challenging to maintain and no one ever wants to maintain it other than the person who is sacrificing. It just seems like there's a disconnect between who invests in the infrastructure and then at what point is it good enough? That is quite a tough question and it's not a one-sites fit so I work in one country, one country doesn't necessarily work with the other, right? It depends on the culture as one thing the history. New Zealand where I'm from is quite a different barrel of fish, we've got a different mentality, we have a luxury of being a young country, we are far more remote than everyone else so we don't have the immediate threat or historical cultural baguages. That's right. You have more sheep than people, right? Yeah, sheep, cows. So I think recently we implemented quite strict gun laws but in reality they wouldn't be implemented in all countries, we don't have that cultural in history. So I think when you're looking at the kind of systems and how to get the funding, you're looking at people's interests. With the private sector, they can do some good with their technology, they can scale it, they're a lot more mobile. There's also part of the branding as well to show that they're making impact on society and a lot of companies and brands are being held more accountable by the public, particularly if they're publicly traded as well. Governments, yeah, into government partnerships, that's quite crucial if you're wanting to create trade, then invest in infrastructure, the facilitate that trade. I mean, I think we're China creating the train system that they have right now to connect people, the infrastructure now, the power grids, investing in different types of renewable energy to fuel the AI boom is quite crucial. So it's just kind of forward thinking what are the kind of things that the country needs to help sustain this kind of growth. I think this is where my skepticism kind of comes in, right? I won't lie to you, earlier this week I had many, I don't want to say crisis, but I had one of those reflection moments where I was like, oh man, we doomed, people just don't have vision for the future, right? This is a mindset that swoops it on me in the middle of the week while I'm at where I talking about it. So you're not wrong there. If you read the news and what's on your feed, it can become an echo chamber and there's a bit of a data bias there, right? You can perpetuate that. Once you kind of take a step out of sight of this fish bowl, I've been privy to be able to look at some of the data, what people are searching for online, what they're curious about. There are still people that are interested in solutions, people who are looking at positive stories. So it's not always so doom and gloom. Someone as smart as you, who can understand the pitfalls and you can be quite critical of it. But there's still hope as long as you teach people and show them the solutions and possibilities. Let's talk about hope. Because this is probably the thing I should ask you because you have seen so many different stories from so many different places across the globe when it comes to hope. And these stories that you all capture in your work are stories that come from truly crisis zones, like life or death, people dying actively. And yet stories of hope still arise in those places. And I like just, what do you think about when you hear those stories and how do you get that out there to other people, right? Because I feel like people have very few opportunities to see truly inspirational stories of hope these days. That's true, particularly in the cost of living, education, healthcare. You're too busy trying to keep up with just paying the bills for a lot of people, right? And you can't always have this mindset. To be aware of these types of stories. I mean, for me as a marketer, it's the choice of what I want to work on, the projects that people are engaged with, finding the right type of people who have similar thinking in terms of wanting to add more value into society. as opposed to keep on taking and taking. I think for me, it was quite easy in the sense that in the environment I grew up and we were taught quite early on about sustainability, understanding our environment, community. And again, I had that lecture growing up quite far away from more, I would just say, a consumerist culture. But being able to kind of be an example and embody that on a day-to-day basis and interact with people and just making the right type of choices, especially now that I'm a father, one and two soon to be, but I perpetuate that type of behavior as well. Talk to me about that there. Yeah, go deeper. What do you mean by embody that for the kiddos? Because I think to me, it's really hard to imagine how do you embody prioritizing these values when you, not everybody has the headspace, right? A lot of people are working paycheck to paycheck. So what manifestation, how does that play out? How does someone find the headspace to even put that kind of time into it? I mean, it's just, let's say for me, like, okay, so how I treat my wife would send an example of how my daughter sees what's acceptable, what's not. The books I choose to buy and read to her on a regular basis tells her a certain story and a view of the world. So being aware of these types of books, spending a bit of time researching and also understanding what's out there talking to other parents, and just daily practice of it, and then explaining things. Good thing in my daughter's at the age of why, why, why. I literally have to explain stuff three times to her, as she'll ask it, why, why, until I answer three times with enough depth, she's satisfied. So, but it keeps me in check, 'cause like, okay, why am I doing these things? When I think this way, and I take it as an opportunity to answer a question, not because it's a nuisance, but because she truly wants to know. So doing about a suffer-reflection, understanding the limitations of what my parents are able to do, raising me with the technology they did not have. Yeah. The choices they make, I take that as part of my reflection process, and how I want to start the next day, and what I want to do with my wife, my daughter, and the work. It sounds very intentional and curated, right? In the construct of how do I use spend your time to get a result for her in that journey, because, you know, I think a lot of people, and if I could say this, I think you curate hope, right? That you have to be intentional about seeking out ways to keep motivated, ways to keep inspired, right? Because the cycle that you create by finding good stories for your daughter is to give her the opportunity to ask why, why, why questions. And then she inspires you, and in other cycle continues, right? Because you want to see that smile light up in her face, the curiosity of the caring, right? And that manifestation even in just that small place, is your conscious effort to build hope for yourself even. Yeah. I mean, I never thought about it that way, and then for myself, I was more just, okay, you know, trying to sit her on the right path. It's gonna be a good day. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, being able to be a good parent to your kid, I mean, it pays dividends on the future. You know, you give them the right skills, my shoun, and mental intelligence to take on the world, and the longer it's less of a burden on yourself, right? But it has to start with this type of. Struggles at the start, you know? How do you talk to them in the right way, be empathetic to what they're feeling? They're not purposely trying to antagonize you, they don't have the tools and mechanisms to communicate that well. They really feel and how they perceive the world, because there's a limit to knowledge. You're bounded by your own rationality, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. How many of these questions that you think about when you. your daughter, do you apply to social media as well? They're not trying to antagonize me. What would interest them? What would excite them? How much of an overlap is there in these questions? Oh, you mean how I engage in social media? Yeah, exactly. How do you tell effective stories? Because you're getting all this data. Your team works on telling a story across the globe. How do you get people to take action? What stories are you thinking about? I think understanding your audience is key. Understanding where they're coming from, what level of knowledge that they may have. I've dealt with very technical people, and they know their stuff, and they'd be quite critical, because it's very scientifically based, and I get it. But you're not going to get scalability and broader public adoption and support if you can't simplify it and condense it into bite-sized content. We currently are at the age of attention. You can swipe so easily, get access information, and dopamine mechanisms kick in, and it's like, entertain me or move on, right? So understanding that mechanism, those tools, how to cure it, their content. And this is not, I guess, actually, how do you evaluate yourself on that? Because this is a humanitarian challenge. Humanitarian challenge is, you know, how does that translate into that dopamine hit? Because that's a tough one, I imagine. It is. I think it's sometimes, depending on the topic, can be a chicken or egg type thing. Understanding what the initial interest is, what you're the wider social spaces and media spaces talking about. Where do you find your white space there? I can think of, let's say, nutrition, nutrition as a topic. For the general public, they think nutrition, you talk to someone about nutrition, about a meal plan to lose weight or to even bulk, right? But nutrition is fundamental for societies and populations in countries to grow from youth to mothers to preventing a lot of ailments, you know, proper nutrition. So that's something to educate about how to feed people, how to farm the right type of food and not eat too much processed stuff. So once we kind of looked at the data, it's like this is a very steep hill, you know, we're trying to get nutrition out there, but everyone's searching for something else. So why not flip it on his head? Let's go malnutrition. That's the opposite of night, you know, eating right. And we found, okay, that worked out better for us. We figured out the type of content that need to be written and what type of style that people consume content. Yeah. Then working with different teams to adapt it to a social media platform, get a photograph, get a video, and you're getting a face-to-camera video to get someone to speak to it, to give it more authenticity, and just scale it at that. Oh, is it my internet that's not working? Johnny, I think I've just lost you, brother. Hello? Hello. Okay. So you were just saying, infographic and how people adjusted to the right platform, infographics, video, tech, target, etc. And then I lost you. And then just putting it out there, and we're intent, we're looking at the data, how structured and optimizing based off there as well. Okay, it's very a sort of process, particularly if you're going up to a global audience. Right? So you have to understand it's a positive feedback cycle, essentially. So one of the things that I think a lot of people don't appreciate about third sector organizations, international NGOs, and these kind of things, is that there's multiple audiences. You have the people who are your beneficiaries, the ones who receive support from you, and then you have your funders, your stakeholders, your employees, etc. These are all different groups, and then you have people who are just out there and they're non-committed and non-interested. So how do you balance the narrative across a very complex organization? Because for something like, I don't know, like a big telco company, right? All they got to do is sell service. They don't have to go sell to investors via their social media. Do you have to sell to investors and funders via your social media, or is it purely focused on beneficiaries? I wish it was solely on beneficiaries. I mean, as they say, there's no such thing as a free lunch, right? So governments do donate to us. We also get more and more funding from the private sector, as well as the general public. So of course, if you're getting direct funding from certain governments or organizations, you do need to give them a shout out, and show the effectiveness of their work. The general public, they just don't like to know that organization like us is actually taking action, and they may not be able to immediately help, but there's also to give them that visibility and transparency of what you can do. And we will help support that. But it's also combating, I think, a lot of false narratives out there via being able to be on the ground, show what's truly going on, provide the numbers, in fact, to combat those myths. So people can make informed decisions. That's tough. So earlier we were talking about like how AI is starting to get into the space and we talked about like how data is currently quite privileged. How are you using AI to think about social media then, right? Because when you're thinking about telling the story to like these very complex groups of people, shout out to my boys in Block Country thanks for the funding, right? How do you use AI effectively to cover the bases? And what are like are there creative ways that you've seen that people are using AI in social media that isn't just like making fake Donald Trumps in your days and outfits? I think he does it for himself. Yeah, actually he doesn't mean that he doesn't need everything. He's got his own A. He's got his own A. Yeah, for me I think because we have a lot of people on the ground doing really impactful working directly with beneficiaries and particularly with the funding cuts, we don't necessarily have the luxury of having less their communication specialist on the ground to be able to document and tell their story and create that story in a digested environment that would actually resonate with the wider public. Nonetheless the work that they're doing is fundamentally important. So with the technology that we have now and it's progressing and it's becoming better and better, we're able to in my mind scale it faster. So we're able to get the content transcribed but put it into the right formats, get the type of templates that we need that's based on best practice, put it out there and because there's an individual sphere where I have to get the data and analyze and then understand what works, what doesn't, how do we optimize let's say at a global level, what works at a regional and country specific level to make sure it's relevant and scalable. So you're shortening the cycle of the information coming from the ground into the story and actually being deployed in a useful way and then quickly thereafter being assessed again and then trying to restructure it as fast as possible because like it sounds like there's, I mean it's just like I can't imagine working across multiple countries like because the only work that I've done right when it comes to third sector engagement beneficiaries is across a region. Right. And a region, yeah, sure, that's a lot of people but like it is nothing compared to like 10 different languages in 10 different countries just like, exactly, exactly. So I think one of the manual processes that you'd have to be trained in multiple languages depend on those people to do the right translations, get those translations vetted at the highest levels to show that the language and tone is right because it can be quite geopolitically sensitive. So you do get these types of bottlenecks. I think now that we've have centralized processes at regional levels and global levels that we're able to monitor things properly and there's more visibility to see what's being vetted and approved of and what's not and we're able to adjust that scale. Now there's still a lot of work behind the scenes to test and ensure that the machine learning models and the way that content is tagged and has representative and accurate. But I'm hopeful they'll hit in the right direction that more positive stories and voices will be told particularly at the ground level. Okay. So you're kind of taking a balanced but optimistic standpoint that the tools that are coming out of the AI wave are enabling more voices to participate in their own digital sovereignty maybe, right? And that structure allows people to say, okay, this is the data that actually comes from my people. It is not telling the story of Tim in Silicon Valley rather. It is capturing the narrative a little bit closer for someone on the ground in, I don't know, Zimbabwe. Yeah, I mean, just as the printing press changed how knowledge was transferred, now you're able to get more stories out there across different languages and borders more effectively in a way that's digestible. But aren't you worried that there's too much, right? Because what I see so much of now is that with AI content, you get jokers who are creating books that are not good books, right? They have bad content, right? And you've all gotten sick from reading, like, I heard the story the other day that someone bought a book from Amazon and in that book, right, was this you? That was me. Yeah, oh my gosh. Yeah, this is the mushroom story, right? No, no, it was a parenting book and it was supposed to be about stories about-- These are different stories, dude. These are different stories. This is how much is happening, right? I heard a dude who ate a mushroom based off of a guide book that was supposed to be about my ecology, but that was AI generated and that person got sick. And you're hearing a story from Parenting Land. Yeah, no, it was supposed-- it's a fictional story for my one, so I don't have to arrest my daughter eating anything that she's not supposed to, but I mean, all images were AI generated. So you've lost the kind of illustrative storytelling continuity that their kids love to see. And they spot the details, man. Yeah, they do. Why do they have three hands? We're all about inclusive ableism, right? This is like-- Let's allow people to have as many hands as they want. Yeah. This is not exactly what we're expecting from AI. Yeah, I mean, you can get a lot of information. It's all-- I mean, being in the digital space, it's a blessing and a curse. You know, it is quite an occupational hazard, but I think it's also understanding-- and I personally would have how to switch off and then being conscious of what I consume. Realizing sometimes you can be doom scrolling. Yeah, OK, this is not good for me. Luckily, I have the kid that bugs me all the time and wants my attention. So I'm like, OK, I'll give her my attention. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Yeah. I do worry about how much content there is out there, right? Because-- and here I am, literally with you right now. We're creating content, right? We are putting stuff out there. Thankfully, none of us are AI generated, otherwise it'd be far more beautiful. But the reality is that there's all this information that's coming out there. And there are lots of people talking about lots of different things. Finding a way to get the story through the noise is going to be increasingly challenging. And I'm curious to see how AI tools evolve around that front because there is not necessarily a way for AI yet to replicate the taste and profile or the interests of the human mind or the human nature, right? I don't think we've figured that out yet. Don't get me wrong. I have some recipes and I rely on them for some help and I need to end the AI machine to solve some problems for me. But the human nature is quite fickle. And that's what I think is the supreme challenge of humanitarian issues, is that they're so complex, right? We have not yet captured that complexity. That's why we still need the people on the ground as those--how would you say gatekeepers and the interpreters, right? And we have a hashtag gatekeeping, is that we love to do that? Maybe gatekeepers, not the right word. I understand, right? As guardians and preserverers of tools. There we go. That's a little bit of a way, right? There we go. Thank you. Sorry. Can we touch you for that? Touching your gatekeeping. No, gatekeeping. I do need to get more sleep. I got up early and just making pizza with my daughter just before. Oh, that's so good. Love that. No, I think, yeah, the human element is going to be important because the range of emotions and culture nuances, I don't think, could be translated into a natural language process. If anything, it's just a snapshot of humanity and society at that particular point of time. So how do you talk to people who believe that tech will solve those problems, right? Because there's a big belief that we can use tech to replicate local issues and replicate all kinds of perspectives and effectively replace humans, right? There was a huge ad campaign here in London and I don't think it was intended to be so demeaning of humanity. But it was intended to be controversial. It says fire your human workers and hire AI to replace them essentially. You know, I mean, I guess I get it. But God, I have mercy, right? These are people's lives, right? It's not turning a switch on and off and on. I'd be interesting to see the differences in the UK given that you're based here and how you guys went through the industrial revolution and looking at the differences in the quality of life because the same general sentiment that the light out side towards machinery and industrial machinery is the same thing as happening with AI. This things are going to change, but it's also an opportunity to free us up from a medial task and an opportunity to, let's say, do more creative stuff, do more original thinking and storytelling. I love the optimism, right? I hope so. Because I'm still doing some of the medial tasks. And AI seems to be doing some of the more creative ones. I'm thinking of the next generation in the culture that's available now and the hustle culture with e-commerce and technology tools, SaaS tools. Something I would not have imagined is someone going up through high school and university, but I'm not sure. I kind of imagine what the world will be like for, you know, my daughter and what their potential is because you have so many tools that allow you to access information and give you frameworks that aren't so gated anymore. Right? Yeah, that's true. That's true. Let me ask you one question here that I think might turn some perspectives on its head a little bit, right? And this kind of goes towards the values that are kind of being, being kind of advanced in humanitarian organizations right now. And I think AI makes an assumption about a set of values and I think humanitarian organizations make a set of values and they're quite different, right? So let me start with AI. AI believes, or at least at least a lot of people in the tech space believe that tech can solve us and that we save us and solve most of society's problems. As humanitarian organizations at its heart, it seems to recognize that there are very complex human issues at its core. We're trying to marry these two worlds together and try to bring them to a point where human based decision-making can leverage AI to solve very complex problems. Right? That's the dream state. Is it possible, and this is going to be a really contentious one, that humanitarian organizations have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. Right? Because it creates, you know, it creates jobs. It creates activities, right? You know, if it was such a great solution, you know, to solve crises in different places, is there a possibility that these international organizations have vested interest in continuing to maintain, right? It's a tough one. I think that's probably something that we've actually covered in class looking at a recent project plan, right? Is that structure, the governance structure, who are your stakeholders, and what is your exit plan? What is the mission drift you're willing to tolerate? Is it a goal that, you know, you make yourself redundant? That's objective. Let's say the AIDS organization, the UN, we've made leaps and bounds in dealing with that. I'm fortunate some of the funding cuts have crippled a lot of those initiatives, but we've made huge progress and objective is to make that organization redundant, right? Yeah, yeah. So, if your objectives are more profit driven, you can arguably say some pharmaceutical companies are slowing some of the cancer development and treatments with the objective of milking them and leveraging the insurance payouts. Okay, that's their model. But I think for a humanitarian organization, it's, you're also going to have to deal with a lot of disasters, natural or not. Climate change is something that's going to affect everyone. Some people are just sitting bigger boats compared to some others, right? That's true. So, they're a bit more tolerant to some of the waves that come out of them. But technology, I think, is a way to be used in the right way. And we just have to have the right governance models set in place and the right type of training and education of sub-a-how to use it on energy in the right way. I really resonate with that because I think there is this kind of issue here of saying, you know, that if we leave things as is and we assume that the organization just continues to do its thing, we don't put the constraints and controls that are needed on an organization in order to make sure that, you know, they do have a quote-unquote end of life, right? So I think this is possibly one of the dangers of like, you know, like mega-corps and, you know, long-lasting organizations is that some of these organizations, they're interested, like, let's just keep doing us, right? Let's just keep getting rich and keep making money for the shareholders and keeping, you know, paying pockets, right? And like, there's no flawless organization, obviously, right? But if we aren't conscious about the end and having it in mind, then we do kind of open ourselves up to this creep where we end up in a situation where we just keep going, right? And I think it would be helpful. It would be helpful, I think, for people to daydream of the end of a problem, right? And what they should do in that instance and define what success is because, like, otherwise, it just feels like it's an unending problem, right? Like, we just fight in a hill and I can't imagine how you feel because, like, some of these issues are pretty frickin' hairy. So, hold on, you know what? Hairy gets a bad, bad rap. Like, why is hair bad? Okay, anyway, sorry. It's pretty gnarly issue that deserves, you know, an end. Like, we want an end, ideally. But at the same time, like, these problems are quite distressing. So I'd be curious how you think about staying motivated in those instances because that's a big challenge. And I think you have to deal with the realities of life. That there are going to be good people and bad people and those that define based on, you know, cultural lenses. That if I don't keep on doing my work, that's less positive impact compared to someone who's continually wanting to take advantage of the situations as negative situations, right? So my objective is to add more value to society. That being said, you know, how do you eat an elephant and take it bite by bite? You know, you understand this systemic issues and the different levers and players in that situation, but you do what you got to do with your resources and try and find the right people to work with to scale it. I'm going to go back to something you said right at the beginning when we were speaking. You said, the openness and the willingness to experience kind of new challenges, opportunities, curiosities. And I think that still applies when you're thinking about the big grand issue that you're working on, that it's also possible to be right and wrong when we make or try to do some kind of good in the world, right? Yep. And it's also essential that we come to terms with our contribution to a big problem. And where I have tried to distill my own piece of working in the sector for five years has been that you have to be aspirational enough to want to change a big problem and try to address something massive. But then you also have to be at peace with the fact that you are a small fish in a very big ocean. Yeah. I mean, not to sound cliche and I'm fully aware that, you know, I'm taking this call in Rome, but you know, as a saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day. It's a process. You get some small wins and you make a case study out there and then snowballs, right? So when you're talking about technology and dealing with people and its ability to empower and do more positive stuff, how do you teach people about that? You do some small wins. You do some projects out in the field or you work with some internal stakeholders and do a project and really work with them collaboratively and not come in as a threat to them because you have to understand where they're coming from. There is a technology shift, a skillshifter, fear of redundancy. So coming at it in a collaborative manner and showing the win-win opportunities. Yeah. Okay. Let me, so like taking that small step kind of question, let's wrap up with a final question and it's kind of shocking that we're already like so fast at the end. If you were to break it down into small bits for people who don't work in like a third sector or humanitarian sector or any of these places, right? And they're just doing their day to day life. What's the small thing that they could do to contribute to affecting some kind of good, right? Using your context of humanitarian scene, using your context of the marketing and storytelling. What's one small thing a person could do to contribute in some, in some small way towards affecting good in your space or in a space that you think is important? It's not always that you could look at this. I think if you are a person that means, I would say definitely try and learn different cultures, understanding differences and seeing that there's beauty in that. I think that's a lot to be misunderstood about different people in the history and cultures and I think once you kind of have that you have a bit more empathy and then will be being you know, so quick to anger. So I think that's a huge issue and that's why we have a lot of conflict. If you are a professional of some sort and you have a very technical skill, finding opportunities to do some pro bono work because people in the human in the NGO space are very short-handed in terms of resources. They're operating at very fine margins, right? And being able to do that pro bono work, even if it's project-based, or even teaching people, students, to give them life skills. In your neighborhood. In your neighborhood or going into different countries and donating your time, now with the internet and technology, you can do that, you know, beyond borders. I think that's a very positive thing because, you know, being able to empower people to be more resilient and self-sufficient is what they want. They don't want handouts. That's an important thing you have to understand. They don't want all your sickening clothes or snacks and food. They want to be able to self-sustained, shape their own future and feed themselves. That's one thing people don't fully understand. True that. It's hard to remember, right? You're doing something, you're like, "Oh, I'm going to do something good. I'm going to do this thing." And you're like, "Yeah, it is nice that you're doing that thing. Like, you know, donating news clothing, right?" But, you know, you also have to remember that there's this huge mound of clothing in West Africa. That's just growing and growing and growing because there's just so much actually used clothes just sitting there. It's not sustainable. Well, Johnny, if you were to leave any final thoughts with anybody, do you have anything that's just aint debuts out of your mind? Staying curious of being open-minded, I think, and, you know, get yourself like a two and a half year old to question all the wives and wugs and really make you think and have the patience to kind of reflect why things are the way they are. And really question what can be done and what value you can do to bring to, you know, improve the world. Because I think we're too distracted by a lot of day-to-day consumerism that we could be doing a lot more. And we are the solution to a lot of these problems if we just be more aware of what we're doing on a day-to-day basis. Mindfulness. True that. Well, Johnny, thank you very much for all your time. I appreciate it immensely. I know our listeners will appreciate it as well. The effort to go in and continue to do your day job and still at the same time spend your holidays to talk about. The challenges that are in the space is really appreciated. So thank you, my friend. I appreciate it a lot. And until next time, thank you all for listening. I'm much appreciated. Thank you, Andrew. Always good to talk and do. Thank you. Always. Bye, man.