Glasswing International: Empowering Communities through Mental Health Care and Leveraging Technology for Lasting Impact

This transcript was generated by AI and may contain typos and inaccuracies.

Amie Vaccaro: Welcome to High Impact Growth, a podcast from Dimagi about the role of technology in creating a world where everyone has access to the services they need to thrive. I'm Sarah Strauss, Senior Manager of Revenue Marketing at Dimagi, and today your co-host Amie Vaccaro, Dimagi's Senior Director of Global Marketing and Jonathan Jackson, CEO and Co-Founder, have the privilege of speaking with Celina De Sola, Co-Founder and President of a long-standing partner of Dimagi. Glasswing International.

In this episode, Celina shares Glasswing's remarkable journey and inspiring work to address the root causes and consequences of poverty and violence, particularly in Latin America. Celina talks about their non-clinical model for mental health care and their focus on local solutions to equip communities with the resources they need to navigate adversity. The discussion also highlights the role of technology in driving change and empowering local communities. We hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to the podcast. So we are so excited today to have you here, Celina, with us. Thank you for joining. So you are Co-Founder and President of Glasswing International, which is an organization addressing the root causes and consequences of poverty and violence across 12 countries. I want to hear a bit about your story and how did you get into this work? You know, before we started Glasswing, I'm one of three founders. Initially, right after I finished school, I actually worked in humanitarian aid.

So I worked in areas affected by conflict and natural disasters for about six years. And I think after having done that work, I really became interested and sort of the other founders, actually, but we all became interested in seeing how we could strengthen existing systems as opposed to and figuring out what we could do to help equip what was already in countries to be able to respond to emergencies or to just be able to deal with adversity without necessarily needing other people coming from the outside.

So we moved back to El Salvador, which is where I'm from and where I'm at now, and wanted to first identify what the priorities were here within communities and also even within schools and health care facilities. We went from there, and this is almost 20 years ago now, but really trying to make sure that when we talk to communities and systems, we wanted to understand what the resources were and how we could build on that. So that was really a huge part of it for us, is trying to come in and solve problems, really try to understand them and meet people where they were at and meet systems where they were at.

That's awesome. And we're all based in Latin America right now. The conflict in Central America has become huge in the news and immigration and some of these challenges over the last 10 to 15 years since you started the organization. And the organization has changed a ton. You went from three to 300 employees. You've raised 90 plus million dollars in programming, just huge impact across over 10 countries, worked with 500 plus public schools, just huge, amazing stats and impact and will link to some of your material in the show notes.

How has it kind of felt to be operating as this has become such a heightened area for this region and immigration conflicts, a lot of safety issues in the region? You've been working in it for so long, and I imagine the funding has changed quite dramatically. The needs have changed quite dramatically, but you've always focused on local solutions, which is also not very popular, probably wasn't as much when you first started. So I'm just curious from your journey, how has it felt starting from that founding stage and the changes you've gone through over the last 15 years?

I mean, it's definitely been a lot of changes, right? I think you just move as you go. A lot of times we never said, oh, let's develop a business plan, a start an organization. It was kind of it really grew organically. I think that for us, we started volunteering literally like that's how it started. Right. Like Ken, one of the other co-founders, we just start volunteering in public schools and figuring out what kids needed and what their priorities were. And I think one of the things that's helped us is to be really agile, flexible, really keep that mantra of being responsive and that not just responsive to people, but also contexts.

There's definitely been huge increases for periods of time in the rates of violence and community violence. And then it would get better and then it would get worse. And like you said, Jonathan, it kind of spurred an increased rates of migration, forced migration, because there's always been a huge relationship with migration from the United States. But this is being forced to leave because the circumstances. So as an organization that started in El Salvador and now we've expanded throughout the region, there are a lot of nuanced differences across countries.

And then we also wanted to identify opportunities to be able to work with different partners, say funding partners included, not just communities. So a lot of it's also been looking at, OK, what are the priorities that we're identifying in conversations with the communities and institutions that we're working with? What's the context, the geopolitical context that we're working in? I think it's important to be mindful of that. Right. And then where are there opportunities to get funding that doesn't take you in another direction, but that allows you to continue to do the work that you want to do?

And I think kind of the confluence of all these different things is what's made it challenging, but also exciting, because it's not very predictable. So I think that that responsiveness, even though sometimes it's harder, it's also worked to our favor and then just grow the team. And I have to say our teams now, Jonathan, we're at 600 people in 12 countries. Can you imagine? So that's a lot of people. Yeah, it's a lot of people. So it's also building a team, right? Like we have a lot of people who used to volunteer with us, who have worked for us and over the years have just changed in their leadership roles.

But I think that's been super important, like building a team that is really aligned in terms of how we see our role. Right. And not always being protagonists of everything, but really trying to figure out how to kind of also get out of the way, especially like how do we learn from our work with communities to then meet with policymakers, that kind of work, for example. You don't want to be like front and center about it. It's more about being constructive. And again, with all the political changes and also the context of violence and risk, it's this like dance where you can be as constructive and purposeful as an organization as possible without being politicized or without being put in situations that can compromise your integrity as an organization.

We've had the pleasure of being at a couple of events together and getting to know each other over the last year. But you were already famous to us as Glasswing for your world renowned work in mental health. And I know you've done a lot of amazing iteration, you know, just working with local partners to figure out what can work with the resources that are available. I'd really love to just dig in and hear more about the model. I know you have a TED talk on this that we can link to as well.

But just for our listeners, that model, where it came from and kind of what the theory is of how your specific model works in the extremely difficult context, you know, that you mentioned you work in. Thank you so much, Jonathan.

I don't know about world famous, but thank you. We've been working on this for a long time. I think a couple of things, right? I think mental health, one thing we did know from the beginning, because it's fact, right, there aren't enough human resources to specialize mental health, human resources globally. The other is that mental health, even when we started, was always an issue. I remember when we worked in humanitarian aid context, there was such a gap, right? So we knew that there aren't enough specialists.

So how do we focus on mental health coming from a nonclinical lens to start? Right. And understand that the kind of valuable clinical resources, a specialist, a psychiatrist, psychologist, you want that to be kind of later in the process, like a referral as opposed to loading these few individuals with so much. So we're like, how do we think about something that is nonclinical and that can be amplified and accessible at the community level? So on the one hand, it was like, OK, we have very few human resources that are specialized in mental health.

On the other, there's a huge demand for mental health because it's so broad, right? It's not just psychiatric conditions. It's also just the anxiety, depression. We knew that when people are exposed to stress and violence, that can result in trauma. And when people have the exposure to stress and trauma and they have trauma, that also affects their behavior and their well-being. So we wanted to figure out how to balance those when there was such an extreme difference, like what's available, the demand for it.

So we started looking at how we could do nonclinical training at the community level. And we were looking at it in a school context. So we started with schools looking at restorative practices, community cafes, working with parents, with students. We started with well-being committees in the schools that were comprised of students, teachers and parents. So we were looking at the school as a unit because we knew that that was really important. And then we were looking in the health setting.

And in the health setting, we had people who had arrived in the hospital as a result of some sort of violent injury. So we looked at both of these contexts and given the fact that the referrals were so limited, what could we do? And that's what we started figuring out, how we could develop content that we could use to train existing government employees. Right. That third context that we were looking at actually is with law enforcement, because we knew that there were really complex and adverse interactions between law enforcement and young people in particular.

So we're like, who is the community interacting with on a regular basis? And these three systems for us, aside from child protection, judicial, and all that, were the key institutions. So we started developing content to train within these three system existing employees in two things. One is self-care, like how to care for themselves and how to manage stress and trauma in themselves. And so then they could be better equipped to provide better services. So it was like, how do we get to the most people?

Through system. And how do we do it in nonclinical ways? So you don't have to put everybody through school again, right? College or psychiatry. Yeah. And Celina, in your TED Talk, you speak to this model of trauma-informed services and counseling.

I'm guessing that applies to these three communities. And we'd love to hear a bit about that methodology and what that looks like in how you're working with government employees, law enforcement, school teachers to really train them. Yeah, I mean, trauma-informed is the term we use. Some people don't like the word trauma, so you could even think about it as just like understanding the impact of stress, right? Understanding the impact of adversity. And I think really what we do is provide something called psychoeducation, right?

So how do we provide people with information and the science behind the impact of stress and trauma on a person and on a community? So what we see is that it's incredible when you learn more about how stress and trauma affect your body or behavior, your emotions, your mind. Then you're able to understand what's happening to you physically, understand why you interact a certain way. We can all relate to this. If you've had a horrible day, then you go home, you know, to your house and maybe you're super cranky or you just hate yourself for it.

Right. And it just perpetuates sometimes. And I think just taking that to the next level when you're exposed to really extreme situations that can get worse and worse. So I think that understanding does a couple of things that are pretty transformative. One is it separates your behavior from who you are as a person. So you understand that your behavior is separate and you can change that. So that's really empowering. The other is you have information about it. So you start understanding yourself better and why you're reacting and that your reactions are a consequence of some sort of stimulus.

And then also the tools to manage that in yourself is mindfulness, breathing, meditation, taking a walk outdoors. So then we provide tools also to manage that. And then once we provide that kind of basic trauma, psycho-ed training that we have other levels of training for interventionists and then other trainers. But it does start with this base of knowledge that everybody in any community can really be part of creating an ecosystem that's more conducive to healing and to resilience.

And that's what we liked about it. It's like this democratizing of knowledge, right, and of access to information that can help you and your communities. Right. I love that idea of like it has to start with yourself. Right. Like you really can't learn any sort of super valuable intervention unless you're addressing your own personal sense of well-being. And so the idea that you mentioned around that separation of your behavior under conditions of stress from who you are, I think we can all reflect on wanting to be better parents, better partners, better leaders, better managers.

And that is such a critical area. And it's easy to kind of say that when you're in a moderate stress environment. We're talking about like a normal workplace, but you work in areas of deep amounts of stress, you know, violence and forced migration and so many other hardships. To me and to a lot of others, it can sometimes be like, well, yeah, that's mindfulness and well-being is fine if we're talking about like meditating in your yoga studio. But like, does that really work in these areas of deep stress?

And I'm curious, you know, how you think about that? How do these techniques work? Do they work in all environments? Do they need to change based on the levels of stress and trauma that are present in communities? Because, you know, we've been in private discussions around this, too, with some of our fellow social entrepreneurs. Like it can feel overwhelming sometimes to be trying to talk about managing stress and managing trauma and like a humanitarian crisis, you know, where you have food insecurity, housing insecurity, conflict.

How does that work? Yeah. You know, I think everybody has different strategies for coping. So I think it's also understanding that for some people, it may be going to a church, for some people, it may be just taking a moment alone, listening to music. So I think that it's super important not to be prescriptive about the tools that we provide people with. But even before that, one is and what you said, Amie, you can't pour from an empty cup. So one is understanding that supporting the people who are providing care is absolutely necessary in any society, in any community, in any system, because the same stressors that may be faced in these communities are very likely faced by the teacher, the nurse, the doctor.

So that's really important. And in terms of the tools for managing stress and trauma, I think understanding the science before applying or trying to use those tools in your own life, I think is really helpful. That's what we've seen. So, for example, if we're training a group of law enforcement officers, the entry point isn't necessarily, okay, let's do a mindfulness exercise. Right. I think it's really understanding the brain. And so we have these analogies in the training of like the unconscious and conscious brain, but in ways that are really easy to understand.

We have this analogy of like a rider on an elephant and kind of what is your fight flight freeze versus your critical thinking or decision making? And how do you balance those and how do you work in a way? One is being nonjudgmental, like understanding that you are built to survive so that your reactions are actually reactions that evolved over millions of years. Like this is the way you're supposed to react to something that's menacing a threat, a danger. It's just that over millions of years, sometimes those reactions aren't adapted to the new environment, so to speak.

So it's kind of understanding that your body's trying to protect you. So if we understand that your body's trying to protect you with less judgment, what tools do we need to then help manage that and help navigate that and help regulate again? And the nonjudgment is really important. And then I think once we acquire the tools, it's also understanding how much you can do for other people. Like, you know how much you can do for yourself, but it's also understanding that when you're trying to support other people, what our limitations are, what kind of support we can provide based on our expertise and training.

So, you know, it's a balance of that because sometimes in a crisis, you also want to do sometimes more than you know how to do. For example, in dealing with, you know, suicidal ideation or suicidal thoughts, you know, that's something that a lot of teachers are facing or in communities. We also have to understand where the limit of our competencies are, make sure that we identify those points of referral and ideally link to the systems that do have specialists, because I think that's another thing that's important with mental health.

We have to understand where our capacities end and where we need to collaborate and make sure we team up with specialists in other sectors, perhaps, or, you know, we can't private specialists how we like systems. So especially in context of crises and with violence, like you said, one of the most important ways for particularly young people to recover from trauma is to have healthy, consistent relationships with caring adult figures. So it's not clinical necessarily, right? Sometimes it's just building those ecosystems where we can be that person for someone else, like the caring adult figure isn't a prescription.

It's something that actually really helps people and children overcome adversity. That's great. And that linkage back to specialists is something we've heard from, you know, multiple social innovators who have designed programs similar to yours that really leverage local community structures, local providers to add on or support mental health and always needing to be able to escalate that, you know, back into the limited specialized resources we do have for the cases that that do need more.

With the scalability of your model, I'm really curious the ability to train, you know, in school settings, in law enforcement settings, and in a variety of different environments in a variety of different countries. Training can be a huge issue for many programs that quality in terms of how you repeatably train, how you do supportive supervision and things. I'm curious just to hear a bit about, you know, how long is your training? How long do you support? Just take us through that because that has seemed to be a crucial innovation to programs that can scale with quality as they crack something about how their training model, you know, lands and resonates with the providers, works for the community and scales across multiple cultural contacts.

Yeah, I think that's something that we continue to learn about, Jonathan. I think there's a huge, you know, when you think about scale at this, that these numbers and within these public institutions, there's a lot of different variables, right? Say our initial course is about 16 hours. And then there's also how you deliver that. Like if you do two eight hour days, that's really long, right? That leaves very little time for people because a lot of people in this kind of in these kinds of trainees want to share and interact and you really get invested in the process.

So the 16 hours tend to be divided into multiple days. So coordinating that right with the Ministry of Ed or the Ministries of Health or law enforcement or judicial, whatever, all these different institutions takes a lot of logistics. But also if you have four chunks of four hours, for example, or six hours, it also gives people time to kind of process what they're learning. So I think that's one. The other is obviously that buy in is critical to have. But luckily, I think for mental health, especially with the self-care component, that there's a huge demand for.

So that really opens up the doors within different partner institutions to work together on it. As far as the quality and the fidelity, I think that's something that's always a challenge because you really want to build the capabilities and have training, you know, train trainers within institutions so they can continue that. Learning, but to have effective training, you need effective trainers so you can be very technical, very knowledgeable and understand content very well.

It doesn't mean you're an amazing trainer because that requires a whole other skill set. So one of the challenges is just finding people who love to train and who are very good at it. And I think that that's been something that's really important for us. So who do we identify within our partner institutions, public and civil society? Who do we identify that are good trainers and really invest in them? I think that's important. The other thing we've been doing is just working with the training institutions, for example, the nursing schools, the teachers, the universities.

How do we work within the academia to start integrating this kind of training into what a teacher, doctor or cadet received just as part of the curriculum? And I think that's really important. If we could just make mental health part of the curriculum for all of these professions, I think that would probably be the best way to do it because professors know how to teach and you'd have good trainers there. Sometimes we'll work with people and they know the content so well, but the delivery, you know, the delivery is so important because you're talking about things that really hit home and that are sensitive.

So the training is really the capacity of the trainers to the interpersonal skills are really, really important. We use equip, which is the WHO and UNICEF training for providers of care. And we also have to be mindful of the protocols in place when things do come up during training that you have to manage. So that's something that's not just training on anything. It's training on issues that may bring up things that are triggering or things that are very sensitive. So we need to know how to navigate those.

So these are all things that make it more difficult in many ways, but also meaningful. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I imagine a lot of sensitive things can come up in a training on how to deal with these issues. Can you share with us, Celina, a little bit about like what's the current scale? You know, you mentioned earlier you've got 600 people in your organization. We're sort of drilling in on the mental health work specifically. Like how have you been able to scale these programs and maybe give us like a bird's eye view of what what these programs look like?

Sure. I mean, the team isn't only working on the mental health piece, but the mental health team, it's called SanaMente, our mental health program, which means healthy minds and also healthily. So for the SanaMente program, we do have a growing team. And our goal over the next three to four years is to train 100,000. The goal in this specific project is to train 100,000 providers of care. So teachers, doctors, nurses, child protection and also law enforcement, and make sure that within that number of people we have trained trainers within these public institutions.

So our goal is to over time make sure that this becomes really integrated and embedded in institutions. Obviously, if there's a demand for it, which to date we found a huge demand. In fact, we were supposed to start this project in three countries, in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. And now we're also working in Mexico and Colombia in context where there are a lot of persons on them. So we've adapted it to that. But the demand is such that we're really trying to make sure that the content we have is adaptable to many different contexts.

So the idea is to reach that many people who can then be kind of that first stop in terms of mental health for millions of people. Our goal is with those 100,000, we estimated that we'd provide more access to frontline kind of mental health care for about 10 million people. And then again, I want to reiterate the referrals, right? Understanding that this is just kind of a first response, so to speak, in mental health. And then in education, we have other programs as well. So our teams are working in the education space as well, recovering learning loss.

Yeah, I mean, that's a hugely ambitious goal of 100,000 providers trained and reaching 10 million people. You mentioned earlier that, you know, ideally this would be integrated into existing curriculums. And I'm curious to hear a little bit about your thinking around sustainability and long term longevity of these programs. And, you know, where do you see these programs going from here? Do you see a world where these programs get taken over by governments or how do you imagine scaling this over time?

I mean, I think that's the ideal. I think for us, if this can become something that just becomes part of the curricula, right? So if you're a cadet in the police academy, these are modules in your learning, like this is part of what you need to graduate. If you're in Teachers College, if you're whatever it is, then, you know, the American Heart Association, they do CPR training and you have to certify every so often. Ideally, you would have within these same public institutions, some sort of process through which you could reinforce that.

But I do think there's also a culture change factor that we're trying to achieve by saturating institutions with this training and knowledge. And I think that that culture change of understanding what I mentioned earlier, the kind of trauma lens is understanding the behaviors or consequence, understanding what stressors do. We really believe that that can change culture, right? In a school community, like if the child is just behaving in a classroom, instead of kicking them out, a teacher understands that there's probably something going on.

Or if they're very withdrawn, it can be like a red flag. So I think if we start all understanding this as societies, then we change the way we interact with people and with people's behaviors. And that's kind of the goal. It's not just for institutions to understand this, but it's for society as a whole for us to understand that we can all be part of this and really build this into how we operate, you know, and how we interact with each other. I think there's a lot of trauma around many different things, stressors.

And I think if we understand this better, ideally, we'd also have the shift in patterns and in cultures and therefore in behaviors and interactions. And have you found that challenging? I think in some ways, Dimagi is working on a similar pathway. And I'm curious, like what sort of interest or frictions or challenges do you face in trying to make this a more ingrained part of culture to really understand trauma and understand resilience and mental health support? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think the work is super challenging and I think all of our work is challenging.

I definitely think that making it a priority in all these different spaces is challenging because people are trying to survive. Right. So when you're trying to survive, it's really hard to focus on what you see as, you know, that's something I'll deal with after I can feed my family and actually walk home safely. So there is a real challenge just in terms of bringing this front and center when there's so many priorities. So how do we formulate this or how do we approach this in a way that it seems being helpful to address the other priorities, not instead of.

So it's not replacing other work in GBB or other areas. It's how do we use this to help address both the causes and consequences of these other crises or these other situations? I think that's what makes it challenging. I think sustainability in general is challenging because you do need to achieve that change in mindset in order for this to be a continued ongoing part of the work and to get that buy in. It's reaching a lot of people. Sometimes you're creating a demand for a product that exists.

So that's a lot of what we're trying to do. And I think we're going to continue to have challenges, but I also think there's such an openness right now because people want so badly to be able to manage their stress, anxiety and sadness. So it's a really good moment right now to do it. And it doesn't make people feel unsafe or more threatened than they already are. Gentleness that you need to approach subjects that are sensitive. Again, be mindful of those protocols. I think that's something that's really important, like knowing how to approach sensitive situations, not asking for information all the time, not questioning people what happened, what do you feel like, but just creating that sense of safety and providing them with the information, tools and referrals when needed.

So I definitely think those will continue to be challenges. I'm waiting when we can talk to the social entrepreneurs. Like, oh, yeah, it's super easy. The government just totally wanted to take this over and did it with quality and it was no problem. And I want to highlight one thing you said, Celina, that when we think about adding these into existing training programs or others, everybody's like, oh, it's just 16 hours more. But that's on top of everybody else also wanting more 16 hour program, et cetera.

And one of the things I think is a really important thing for the industry to do a better job of is kind of reject the premise that this is a big trade off or this is in addition to their core responsibilities. If you're a teacher or you're a law enforcement or you're in some of these fields, supporting mental health in the way you're talking about is going to make you better at your quote unquote core job function. And so I think for a lot of these areas, it shouldn't necessarily be viewed as something additional that both takes extra training time and then extra service delivery time.

It actually makes the service delivery more efficient and more productive because mental health and resiliency is such a huge part of those environments and what is necessary to reach the clients that are trying to serve. So, yeah, I love that explanation. And with scalability and with transition to government, technology is also a huge factor often and how we think about the scalability programs. And I'm curious, you know, how has Glasswing been looking at technology? I know Dimagi and Glasswing are excited to be partnering together with some aspects, but in general, you can imagine lots of ways technology could help with training or with data management areas.

I'm curious, what have you explored? What are you excited about and how are you viewing technology as one of the tools that can help in an expansion of your programs? Yeah, I mean, I think technology is really key, especially in mental health care.

I feel like there's been a lot of conversation around AI and mental health and the ethics around that. And I really believe in kind of interpersonal, you know, human contact for healing. But I do think the technology is absolutely indispensable when it comes definitely, yes, to data management. Like you said, obviously, you guys are experts in that at Dimagi. And but also for ongoing training, I do think what we've seen is it's better to do in person and then complement with online.

So you have to be leverage technology better to provide ongoing training, to provide these like sound bites or small recordings that people digest so little information now at a time. Easy to access videos, content to reinforce the learning. I think that's really key for us because you can have that reach and then it would also continue to reinforce once governments do it directly, how you can continue to provide content in a way that's going to reinforce it with the messages and maintaining the fidelity of that material.

So I think that that's super valuable. And then the data is important because we want governments to understand how valuable it is, not just people can provide better care, their workforce, but also that they can have greater well-being. So it's also an HR strategy, not just like a service delivery for your end user, but also for your own human resources to be better conditions, better stay emotionally and physically. So I think technology is an indispensable standpoint and the data allows you to look at things.

Yeah, that's awesome. And so well said, you spoke at the beginning around this sort of responsive model of kind of learning from policymakers and partners and funders and what their priorities are. Have you been able to use data to help propel the organization forward and sort of showcase the impact that you're making? Like how has data been useful in terms of your journey? Absolutely. The kind of monitoring evaluation piece is constant to figure out what's working, if you're achieving what you want to achieve.

We're 17 years into the organization. You always feel like you're constantly looking at everything again. And I think data isn't just a tool for us to see if we're actually achieving what we want to achieve with the effectiveness and the impact, but also to identify when we're not and to identify in many cases what we can do better. Like you can have a more nuanced, detailed look at what you're doing and see like which piece of it we need to improve on. And it also helps us when we interact with institutions to show that data, what is working and what's not.

Because a lot of times, governments can't maintain the same level of rigor that an organization can. And I think data both qualitative and quantitative, right? I think both are super important also. The complexity when we talk about ecosystems conducive to healing or to resilience, that can't always be obtained through quantitative methods, but we can combine the two. And I think that's where the quantitative methods are sometimes the most important in trying to advocate for policy or integrating something into a ministry.

I mean, again, you guys are the experts in this, but I know as an organization without having data, there's very little we can do to move the needle beyond what we implement directly. Our goal is really way beyond what we implement directly because we understand that the public systems are the ones who are out there to reach the majority of people so we can contribute to them being better provide services. That's really what we want to achieve. That's great.

And I think that gives me an idea for a new closing question, maybe that we can maybe start asking going forward. But I'm curious, what's one thing that you really thought was going to work that you then learned kind of didn't work that well? And on the flip side, what's one thing you were kind of skeptical of? And you're like, oh, wow, that worked extremely well in some of those learnings as you iterated on your program so much over these 17 years? I think I thought that training of trainers, I took for granted that if they just were really knowledgeable about the content, you know what I mean?

We have like you learn it, then you become an interventionist, then you become a TOT. And it didn't really work like that. Like now we're like the TOTs, the training of trainers. It has to be like a really different selection process with more nuance than we had originally because of all the things that were coming up and just navigating of the conversations, the context, the charisma to deliver content, right? And the optimism because you want this to come with optimism and hope.

So that's one that I think I was like, yikes. And then I think on what's worked really well is it's actually really refreshing that there is a lot of demand for this. So it's almost like scary in a sense. You really hope you're doing it really well. And we're not going to know, right? For years. But there is a lot of demand for this almost too much. And of course, it's like everybody who wants to do it, we say yes. And we're like, let's do it. Let's do it because we want to provide this for everyone.

But, you know, we'll see. But there has been a lot of demand and I think it's the timing and also the heavy focus on self-care. So I'm surprised. I know we know it's going to be hard to actually integrate this into systems, but at least there's a demand at multiple levels that is exciting. It's just taking it from there to policy or to operationalizing it. That's a whole other thing. But at least there's an openness to it in all of these sectors that is really exciting right now.

Now we have to deliver, right? We have to do a really good job of it. Well, you picked a great digital partner, so I think you should be all set. Exactly. I think it's a huge learning curve for those of us, and I don't know who's listening, but those of us who don't know how we can leverage technology, I think these are really important conversations to have. Because when it comes to data, what do I not know that I should know about how technology can actually help? Because everybody says it, but then once you start teasing it out and you work as a team, as an organization, it does take conversations to get to a place where you really understand that and can capitalize on opportunities to partner with organizations like Dimagi to figure out how to improve your work, improve the outcomes.

And Celina, that's a great segue into our closing question, which is, are there any sort of final parting messages that you'd want to leave for our audience, which is funders, implementers, technologists all working in this global health and development space? I think I feel like sometimes we all kind of stay in our lane. I mean, not Dimagi, you guys work with so many different sectors, but I think we need to figure out how to integrate the different things we're doing better, especially when we're trying to influence policy in order for us to really help governments do a better job.

I think that not just the consistency and transparency, really having conversation, but also instead of bringing like 20 different verticals, like we need to figure out. And I think you said it earlier also Jonathan, how you actually bring something forward that can clearly make evident that that'll help strengthen other things and not become an additional burden. And that's something that we're constantly trying to underscore. Like you said, these 16 hours is a long time, but we're trying to help you achieve all these other outcomes, right?

Like post COVID learning loss, security, HR, and then also team up with organizations doing other things. How do we bring this together, bring this forward in a more integrated way? I think the different work that we're doing come at government from all different directions. In a stream of expertise trying to help, it's just, we got to figure out how we can be most helpful. As a sector, as social entrepreneurs, as organizations, I think funders now are really encouraging more collaboration.

And I think that's really helpful because then we're notched into doing that more as opposed to competing for resources or grants. Well, Celina, thank you so much for coming on. This was amazing to hear your experience and your advice for the audience and look forward to seeing you and working together to help expand your amazing impact. Likewise. Thank you so much. Thank you both. Amie and Jonathan, it was great being here today. Thank you, Celina.