Hello everyone. My name is Joseph Sonny, Vice President of the Africa Center at the United States Institute of Peace. Thank you for joining the U.S. Institute of Peace for today's event, amplifying women's voices for equity and inclusion. But let me begin by presenting the United States Institute of Peace. USIP was founded by the U.S. Congress in 1984 as an independent nonpartisan national institute dedicated to preventing, mitigating, and resolving violent conflict. We do this work by working in conflict zones around the world, providing people, organization, and governments with the research, instruments, knowledge, and support to manage conflict so it doesn't become violent and resolve it when it does. Today's event speaks to key concepts of our mission. In fact, inclusion, justice, diversity, and accessibility, JDEIA, constitute the foundation of peace-building. As a nonpartisan, congressionally founded institute, working to build a more peaceful, inclusive world, USIP recognizes JDEIA as a valuable and essential framework. However, we also see that implementing these principles remains an ongoing challenge. USIP's JDEIA initiative stems out of a desire to address systems of injustice, inequity, and discrimination in the field of peace-building through a framework that addresses those divisional challenges that exist in diverse cultural contexts. We collaborate with practitioners in a variety of international NGOs and in US agencies through workshops and working groups by elevating the voices of those working throughout the field towards the same goal, through publications, events, and our new podcast, Reimagined Diversity and Equity. We strive to collaboratively promote and embed JDEIA in peace-building. Today conversations centers around two critical aspects of this initiative, equity and inclusion through the voices of women working in peace-building organizations as scholars and as practitioners to establish these values within every level of the field. We will not only recognize the challenges to equity and inclusion that women in this field have encountered, but we'll take time to recognize the significance of their contributions to the progression of practice, policies, and understanding of these issues. We have a food program today, including a keynote address, closing remarks, a moderated conversation with a generationally and regionally diverse panel of women, and also we have time for Q&A. Our question chat box is live, so we invite you all to please consider asking questions for one or all our panelists. We are fortunate to have with us today, as our keynote speaker, a leader in the field of peace-building, my Jeff friend, Lee is young, the Executive Director of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. Lee has served in leadership positions for over 25 years in an array of organizations with accomplishments, including establishing the Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation at USAID, serving as the Chief Legal Counsel and Head of the Election Commission Secretariat in Bosnia-Ezegovina and Kosovo. Lee's also worked for the International Rescue Committee in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Bosnia-Eleven. Today, Lee leads the Alliance for Peacebuilding. AFP is a community that strives to advance the field of peace-building by enabling peace-building organizations to achieve greater impact by creating standard best practices, accelerating collective action, and tackling issues too large for individual peace-building organizations to address alone. Lee, thank you for joining us today. We look forward to hearing your perspective. Thank you, my friend. Good morning, and as Joseph Sonny said, I'm Lee's Hume and I'm the Executive Director of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, and I want to thank my dear friend Sonny and everyone at USIP for inviting me here today. I first want to start off to ensure you that women and inclusion issues are significantly woven into our work at AFP, because we know there are long-standing structural injustices and inequality which are significant grievances that can drive violent conflict and prevent peace-building, and I can assure you that if we don't, Megan Corrado, AFP's incredible Director of Policy and Advocacy will make sure it gets done.  My grandmother, who had such an incredible impact on my life, she was born without the right to vote, so let's stop and think about that for a moment. A person who had the most important, was one of the most important people in my life did not have the right to vote. She and her sister protested. They finally got the vote, but they were in college. But we know, unfortunately, this struggle continued for women of color in the United States until 1965, when they finally got legal protections to vote. My mother, who just recently passed away, got pregnant with my brother in the early 60s. She had to quit teaching when her pregnancy started to show. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act wasn't signed into law until 1978 when I was 10 years old. I grew up on cigarette commercials that told us we'd come a long way, baby, so you can imagine my surprise and confusion in the early 1990s when I was openly sexually harassed at my first job at a law firm by a lawyer. But one of my proudest moments was when I was at the OSCE in the late 1990s, when I realized, in Bosnia, they didn't have a sexual harassment policy. And as the chief legal counsel, I wrote their first one that was used throughout all of the OSCE. These are personal stories from right here in the United States. And many of you have stories like this from your own countries. And internationally, just celebrated the 22nd anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which created the framework for the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. And I know that doesn't seem like a lot, given everything that's happened. But the peacebuilding field is still a young field. And in 20 years, we have gotten the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and started to get some really incredible wins. But I'm not going to deny that the last few years have been extremely difficult for equality inclusion. In Afghanistan, women and girls' rights have been ripped away from them.  Women in Iran are fighting for their rights not to be beaten and dragged to prison for how they dress. And even though there are more women now holding seats in African parliaments, 40% of these lawmakers reported that they had experienced sexual harassment. Here in the U.S., some women's rights, actually about one in three, reproductive health rights, have been taken away. And thanks to COVID, women's safety and equality globally has significantly declined. So first, what do we need to do? We need to build diversity of leadership in our organizations because it is the just thing to do, but because substantial research shows us that organizations that are more diverse and inclusive perform better and are more innovative. In 2018, spurred on by the hashtag MeToo movement in Black Lives Matter, I got AFP to conduct research on AFP's members. We looked at their leadership and we recently updated that research again in 2022. So what did we do with this data? We published it. We used it to show our board. We used our agency to show our board that we had to do better in the peace building field, that we had to look at our own board and say, we need a requirement that 50% of our board are women and that diversity and inclusion was a critical priority. So what did we find in this data? Looking at our US-based members of AFP, they've made some progress. And I'm happy to report that representation of women and people of color on boards of directors has increased, which is now 58% of US-based organizations have gender balance boards compared to 45% in 2019. However, there has been little change in the percentages of women and people of color in the top executive positions. The percentage of women CEOs is now 41% compared to 43% in September 19. And the percentage of female board chairs is now 39% compared to 36%. That has to change. So this is just one example. So here's my challenge. We have to have hope. But more importantly, we need collective agency. And we have more power than we think to demand diversity of leadership within all our organizations, including your own organization, like we did at AFP. And if your leadership is not posted publicly, make sure it is. Celebrate organizations like WCAPS, who was one of AFP's first DEI champion of change awardees and amplify this achievement. Learn what they're doing and see how you can bring that back into your own organization to commit that when you see sexism in the peace building field, like I did at a conference on US peace building right here in DC only a few years ago. Don't freeze at the table like I and other women did, wondering what we should do.  We ended up writing a whole chapter about it in a book on US peace building. Make sure that donors fund and we do the necessary research to advance women and inclusion issues because good data is critical to building better policies and programs. We know that when women are part of the peace process, they are 35% more likely to last beyond 15 years. This data has been critical for our advocacy, but we need more of it. Also commit to publishing more so that our voices are at the top of the search engines. The organization wise reminded me recently that data shows that diverse and inclusive voices conducting critical research with women are lacking. Invest more in women-led organizations everywhere, but especially at the locally led level. Ensure WPS is successfully implemented, starting with advocating that women must be robustly integrated into peace processes. Support and celebrate organizations like I can say for word counterpart and so many others that even though they weren't required to, because WPS principles hadn't been put into action, they put these principles into action in their programs and they shared their findings. We also need to find where we can embed this work, advocate for this work, looking forward. UN, the national agenda for peace in the UN and looking at the UN summit for the future, looking at Papua New Guinea for the Global Fragility Act where we know women's issues are so critical. These are just some of the examples. There's so much more we can do. We have more agency than we think, but we have to use it. Melinda Gates recently said that true equality for women was about 100 years away. It's highly likely I'm not going to see it in my lifetime and either will my daughters, but I think of my grandmother and my great-aunt and what they achieved and I'm still hopeful. Even if it takes 100 years, I'm confident that collectively the women and our allies here today and beyond and the women to come will continue to build on our agency so that our daughters' daughters experience true equality and justice even if it takes another 100 years. Thank you. Thank you, Liz, for those comments. That reflection I think really resonates with me and a lot of other people on this panel and in our audience today. Good morning, everyone. My name is Maria Antonia Montez. I'm a program officer for the Latin America Program at the United States Institute of Peace. I am joined today by a distinguished panel of practitioners and academics who are pioneering the field of equity and inclusion, particularly at the nexus of women and gender identities and particularly in violent contexts around the world. If you'll allow me some brief introductions today, I am pleased to share the virtual stage with Dr. Dorothy Nyambi. Dr. Nyambi is the Chief Executive Officer and President of Mennonite Economic Development Associates. Prior to joining MEDA, she was Executive Vice President of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences and served as Leader and Founding Member of the Gender Summit Africa in Cape Town and Kigali. Dr. Ezra Choudhara is a senior expert for dialogue and inclusion at the United States Institute of Peace on the Inclusive Peace Processes team. From 2011 to 2020, Dr. Choudhara was Regional Mediator for the World Bank. She was also an Associate Professor of Political Science at Billikent University in Turkey and a Senior Fellow at the Inclusive Peace and Transition Initiative in Geneva. Shannon Page is a Policy Associate at Peace Direct. Mrs. Page joined Peace Direct as a 2020 Scoville Peace Fellow. She now serves as a Policy Associate and leads Peace Direct's research and advocacy efforts around decolonizing the peacebuilding system and the development of the organization's US peacebuilding program. Thank you to our panelists for joining us today. So I wanted to get started with a first question and this is for all of you to share some reflections. The experience of peacebuilding for women is not a monolith and we recognize that no individual on our panel can represent the totality of women within this field. So to our panelists, in your experience, how do perceptions of the role of women in peacebuilding and of equity and inclusion vary in different cultural or organizational contexts? Azra, would you like to begin? Sure. Why not? Thank you for the introduction, Tonis. And such a great panel. I'm very much honored to be here this morning and I am a big champion of this initiative within USIP and also in our field actually. So someone was doing research on inclusion and inclusion of women. I'm very excited to be here today. So to answer your question, yes, exactly. This is not the experience of women, it's not a monolith. And I think the key word here is social context. As Liz also mentioned, during her talk, WPS agenda is a normative agenda, which has been successful in some ways. But all these normative frameworks that we have seen in the last two decades, let's say, they tried to standardize, of course, women inclusion in peacebuilding. And they have achieved a lot and it was a great achievement in some sense. But it's also an ideal, right? It's an ideal standard for our field. So in practice, we see a huge variation according changing from one context to another. So cultural context, definitely culture is one aspect. It certainly plays a role, I think. We see some cultures that are more open to adopting these norms, the WPS norms, for example. And we also, and contributions of women in peacebuilding. And we also see some cultures that are more hostile to these norms. That's one fact. But when we say cultures, I would like to actually open that up a little bit. I don't mean national cultures necessarily. Culture is also not a monolith, right? We have Kathleen here, who's an anthropologist and she can say more about this. But when we say culture, we also see variation in this area from organizational culture, professional culture, and even what I would call as generational culture. And in my research with women peacebuilders, we have seen this variation. Certain professional groups, for example, and peacebuilders, I consider them as a professional group. Although they may come from very different countries, very different ethnicities, religions, their perspective is very similar. So you will find many similarities in how a Sudanese women peacebuilder thinks about and sees peace with a Bosnian women peacebuilder, for example. I've also seen a lot of variation across generations of women. That's another sort of cultural variation, I think. I've seen this in my research interviewing different women from different women peacebuilders from different contexts. For example, older generations of women and younger generations of women often have very different views on women's role in peacebuilding. I've seen this in Sudan, for example, talking with some of the Sudanese peacebuilders. They both support women's role. They're both active in they're both very supportive in making women, you know, involved in peacebuilding processes. They all support inclusion, but they still differ very much on the prioritization of issues, the priority or the means, the methods of including women in peacebuilding, for example. We see these generational cultural differences in other places too. And finally, I will stop by adding the point that in addition to culture, I think the cultural context, organization, professional generation, I think we also need to add the individual level variable. That creates a huge variation in the implementation of the JDI agenda from one context to another. And what I mean by the individual level is the role of leadership, for instance. In an organization, this is very crucial. We've seen this in many examples, especially, you know, with individuals, their biases, micro behaviors. These are really crucial in the implementation of the JDI agenda, even though the norms are in general adopted by the organizations, respected by the organizations, the individual differences within that organization or peacebuilding organization may still create a lot of variation in the implementation. Thank you. I'll stop at this point. Thanks, Ezra, for those first reflections. I think what resonates with me is kind of also the concept of intersectionality, how generationally, how contextually the different identities we carry as women also play a factor in that variation of both the mechanisms for participation and the prioritization of issues as you suggested. I wanted to see if Shannon or Dr. Nyambi wanted to pick up on that thread. Yeah, no, thank you, Tonis. You know, just sort of picking up on what Ezra just said, but thank you for the invitation to come onto this panel. I think when we think about peace, you know, I keep repeating, we're always thinking about how we react to conflict. And I think I'm going to approach it, you know, from the perspective of what are the things we need to do to prevent conflict? And what's the role of women, you know, in that context, and how looking at that through a different cultural lens, you know, hopefully can add to the conversation. So I just want to begin by saying I work in economic development. And what that has pushed me to continue to think about is the fact that if we look at the things that cause conflict in general, we look at, you know, people fight or get into conflict because of inequalities, and women suffer that some sense of people feeling excluded, some sense of exclusion, and a sense of injustice, you know, whether it's economic injustice, it's social injustice, those things are the things that push people into conflict, or there's some wealth that they cannot get, and others are benefiting from it. So with respect to women, you know, I think Liz said it really well in her opening remarks in the keynote was how the things that her grandmother experienced have certainly changed from what her experiences, maybe what our children and grandchildren would experience. But if equality is only going to come a hundred years from now, it will certainly be above us. So I think for those of us now, it is really, what do we need to do to prevent? And, you know, prevention is always better than pure.  It is so important that when we look at how we prevent conflict, you know, where women, how economically empowered are women? How much are women engaged in the systems of policy, the decision making at a level of countries institutions? Because if women have agency at all levels within societies and within countries, then I think the ability for us to prevent conflict, you know, becomes higher. But once conflict has happened, I think there's also literature that suggests and says very clearly that when you actually bring women to the negotiating table, you know, the outcomes and the decisions that are made would last longer. They stay longer as part of the process. They think more beyond themselves, you know, and I speak as an African woman, you know, who is settled, you know, in another part of the world.  So with those kinds of thinking, I think women are really well placed, better placed to be your policy makers, decision makers, and irrespective of culture, I think, you know, they will bring that aspect, you know, into the peace process. The other piece for me is the sense of injustice that causes conflict, and how women, you know, always want to, starting from the family units and get into organizations, country, and regions, is how do you reduce that injustice gap? And women tend to certainly bring a different mindset. So I just want to conclude by saying that it is certainly not a monolith, you know, how women show up in the peace building process. It is very different, I think, culturally, the fight for peace in the United States is very different from the fight for peace in the Central African Republic is different from what's happening in Myanmar. And so the women in those contexts understand their context better than somebody living from Canada to go and try to tell them what they need to do in Myanmar.  So I'll stop there for now. Thank you, Dr. Namib. And Shannon, I saw you nodding along and I wanted to ask you of which parts of those that might resonate with the work that you're doing as well. I'm so grateful to be here and really, really grateful to have a chance to think through this with Esra and Dorothy. Really, at PACE Direct, we talk a lot about the necessity of local leadership. And when we're thinking about that, I think something that we really have struggled with historically has been the vitality of women's leadership. And what does that actually look like? And so we've heard a lot that women aren't a monolith. But I also think we need to recognize that our organization's perception of the role of women is also not monolithic. And one thing that is, however, continuous threat throughout all of the conflicts that I've been engaged with since joining has been that long before the international community has noticed what is happening, women's groups are already responding. This was true in Afghanistan, this was true in Ukraine, this was true in Yemen, this is true truly across the world in the United States as well. We have seen that women's groups remain one of the earliest access points for the international community to know what is happening and to begin responding. And that is not something that we can overlook. And we do. And we say this every time a conflict arises, and we recognize their leadership. And then when it comes to the peace process, where are they? And I think something that really, I know we're talking about equity, we're talking about inclusion today. But I want to think about accessibility as we have this conversation, I would like us to think about justice as well. Those two elements are key for us to have true equity, true inclusion when we're thinking about women, and when we're thinking about why are women absent? Because we know we have the studies that as well established that women's inclusion better is the outcome of a peace process. We know this. And so why are we still struggling with women's inclusion? What are the barriers that we are struggling to name, to recognize, and to address? And one thing that I think really needs to be brought into this space is what are the systems that are acting against those of us here who've been doing this work for some time? And it can be uncomfortable in the peacebuilding sector, I think especially in DC to name patriarchy as a system that is negatively impacting the peacebuilding work that we are trying to do. And yet it is one, it is present, it is active. And it manifests differently in these different contexts, which is where we have to have that cultural understanding, that ability to turn to local communities and say, what does this look like for you? What are you seeing that we couldn't understand? And I think when I think about our perceptions of the role of women, I really come down to my own organization. And I want to take a moment to be candid here, which is that Peace Direct has failed to meaningfully integrate women in a lot of our peacebuilding efforts. We've talked about local leadership, but we have failed to explicitly name women's leadership as something that we are committed to. And there are two reasons for that. And I'll just go over them very briefly. The first is that we have taken a gender mainstreaming approach. And with that, we have allowed ourselves to say, well, by virtue of working with local communities, we are also working with women, which to some degree has been true, but that is an oversimplification. And I think when we're thinking about organizational contacts, that's a risk that certain organizations based in the global north could potentially fall into. We think that we're beyond needing to explicitly name gender and women's inclusion as a central element that needs to be centered. And I think the second one is our wariness of imposing our own notions of feminism on the local communities that we are working with. We partner with organizations in 14, 15 different countries that are very culturally diverse. And as part of that, we defer to their leadership in terms of how to access more remote communities, who needs to be present, who even constitutes a local leader. And we have failed to recognize what that looks like. Apology. We have failed to recognize what that looks like when these communities are different, when these communities may not necessarily value women's leadership in the same way, or value certain women's leadership over others. And so as an organization, we're in this period of really humbly trying to learn, trying to ask our partners what that looks like and trying to investigate our own past of inadvertently excluding women from their rightful role. Thanks, Shannon, for that. I think the humility and the candor of seeing where we've also kind of had our own shortcomings as organizations trying to move in advance this agenda. And so I think that segues really well into my next question, which is, from your perspective, what are the structural, and Shannon, you named some structural systemic barriers that we see in, we've seen for women working and make a distinction between peace building and peace making, because I think there they can be oftentimes conflated. And so I wanted to ask you what those systems are, what those systemic barriers are. And then, of course, we always say, and what are the opportunities to break down those barriers as well? Ezra, or Dorothy, if you'd like to take that one. I will take that one. So I guess, because most of my research is focused on resistance to women inclusion in peace building, I kind of see the half empty side of the glass more often, perhaps than the half full side of the glass a bit more. This is not to basically deny all these contributions or achievements that have been there so far. But I think we still have a long way to go, right? And to answer your question, Tonis, in our USIP research, interviewing with various women, 30, 40 women working at different levels from ground, you know, from grassroots facilitators to high level women negotiators, mediators, two things that, I mean, there are various reasons, there are various barriers. But the experience of women working at different levels is also different. I think we also need to recognize this. Some women peace builders working at the very local level grassroots level as facilitators, they're facing different barriers than women mediators working at the UN or working at peace NGOs, they're facing very different barriers. And I think we really need to recognize this as well if we want to advance this agenda. What are some of these barriers that I came across within my own research? I don't have time to go over each one, one by one, but competition, especially within peace NGOs, and there's huge competition for resources and power for taking jobs. And we often see that women peace builders are sort of pushed aside by their male colleagues, actually, working as peace builders. I've heard many stories telling me, you know, that because of the competition for limited resources available for peace building, even though they're hired as cool facilitators, for example, they're often sort of sidelined, etc. This is a reality. Another challenge which Shannon referred to as patriarchy, perhaps a barrier, this is very evasive, right? It's very widespread at every level in a way. But I actually prefer to call it identity threat in my research. And what I mean by that is women's inclusion either in high level peace processes or local level peace building efforts, referring to our peacemaking peace building distinction. Women's inclusion is seen as an identity threat by some people. What does this mean? For example, rejecting women's inclusion as this is a Western plot, right? This is actually something that has to do with Western values, Western cultures, and they are trying to impose their cultural values on us. So we see that a lot in local level, for example. Or the discourse saying that this is a threat to the traditional family structure, right? If more women are involved in peace processes, peace building, this is threatening our family structure. This is also another thing that we hear a lot from these women. I can actually enumerate the examples, all these stories that I heard from women peace builders. But overall, the issue here is that some people or some identity groups perceive threats to their privileged identity status. If women are involved more as equal, so that identity threat factor is there. It's a social identity threat. Another barrier that I saw in my work and my research with women is existing mental models. What I mean by this is like, oh, this is how we are used to do things around here. So we'll continue doing things the same way, right? This is perhaps relevant to Shannon's point about what happens in their own organization, right? It is not necessarily an intentional thing. But it is something more habitual that you have learned and the system one, system two thinking, right? I mean, we often operate on system one because it's more efficient. We don't need to think, we don't need to change. It's actually things get done more quickly and more efficiently. And we don't really think about changing things to something new because we're so mentally used to doing things that way. This is another barrier that I experienced. And finally, let me also mention that one of the things that at least frustrated, frustrate me most still with as a barrier is lack of protection for women peace builders, especially at the grassroots level. I mean, about 20% of the women that I interviewed mentioned that they were threatened physically or they did not feel safe, even though they work as peace builders, they face threats of physical violence. So protection of women peace builders on the ground is a serious necessity. But we need to be really talking about how we do this. It's not just saying, go women, be more involved, do your thing. We really need to think about providing more protection and security for them to do their work. If I have time, I can also perhaps say one more thing about what I call a symbolic inclusion is another threat. But I can actually perhaps talk about this a little bit more in the next round of questions. What I mean by that is that sometimes people in different organizations, they don't act in a pure exclusive way or these organizations are not exclusive as we understand it. So I mean, on the surface, it looks like they include women, but there are so many other subtle non-inclusive ways that they are using to implement the WPS agenda. And I call this symbolic inclusion because it's very different from real inclusion. There is a difference between real inclusion and symbolic inclusion. And I can actually open that up a little bit more if there is time or I will actually wait for the next round of questions. Tonis? Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks, Ezra. I think you're... My time is up, I guess. Sounds good. I saw Dorothy wanting to chime in on some of these points that you made earlier on some of those barriers that she's also recognized. No, I think I agree with everything that Ezra has said, but I think one of the systemic things, the two systemic things I want to pull out and certainly ties into what Ezra said. For me, the first one is the power dynamics in all of this, whether it is through the mental models, whether it is through the patriarchy, whether it's global north, global south. I think one of the barriers is our inability to actually explore and understand who is bringing what power to the table. And until we can face it and actually act on it correctly, I think as Ezra said, it will just be a symbolic trying to include women because it's really all about power. So I think that power analysis and conversation around power needs to be put on the table very clearly. The other issue which I feel is systemic, which we need to address it as we think about peace is what I really put in the bucket of climate change because no matter what we do, a lot of the things that cause conflict, as you look at it, whether it's the inequities, the injustice, the exclusion is the climate change factor that is happening. People don't have enough water, rain, food, they cannot survive economically. And so whilst it is not in one person's hand, I really believe that it is so important that as we look at the systemic things that are barriers to peace building, that climate change is certainly looked at as one of those things. And for me again, it will always be what are the things we need to do to prevent conflict rather than react to conflict. I know conflict is inevitable, but I'll continue to focus on the role of women in doing the things that will help us to prevent conflict and build more peaceful societies rather than always waiting. But no, absolutely agree with Ezra. And I think it was Shannon who said it, the women on the ground in Ukraine in Myanmar, they understand their troubles more. And I think Northern NGOs need to understand that there is a certain different cultural context and those women and people, they have agency, they have knowledge, but others have to give them space so that they can come to the table with that agency and bring that power to the table. So and I think that is really systemic in the sector of this work where we've transformed it and we're going to go into Ukraine and we're going to help fix it because we're a Northern based NGO. So I think that's a systemic issue that needs to be dealt with. Absolutely. I think I work in the context of Latin America and particularly in Colombia where Colombian women have answers to their issues at every level. And so providing that space and elevating it also I think is partly our work. I wanted to segue into our next question, which looks at more maybe of the positive contributions that you all have seen with women working in this field. Perhaps you can highlight some of those examples of women who are creating an impact at either international, national, regional, grassroots levels of peacebuilding and conflict affected countries. I would love to chime in because Peace Direct, we partner with some incredible, incredible women. And so I want to start by sharing, I won't be able to share names for everybody, but we partner with these incredible sisters, Gulalai Ismail, Savai Ismail, maybe you've heard of them, and they founded Aware Girls. And a lot of what they do is they started by looking around what's happening in their communities. They started by speaking to other girls and they started by noticing, well, where are the gaps in knowledge that are causing harm and that are leading to conflict? Dorothy, I'm so glad that you keep referencing the fact that we need to think about these precursors to conflict and that we need to think about it from the development perspective as well. And that's something that we're hearing a lot. And then they're also thinking about research. What are women saying? What are the gaps that the sector is not noticing? How is intimate partner violence also going to be an indicator for conflict on a larger scale? How was that an indicator of peace that hasn't fully arrived? How can we actually measure these things, track these things? And I am deeply grateful to be able to work with these women because I think what it invites us to do is to pay attention. And I think, Dorothy, you mentioned power again, absolutely a vital part of this conversation. We're thinking about power and we're thinking about the position we have in the global north. What does it mean for us to meaningfully engage with these women and their positive contributions? It means that we have to slow down and we have to be listening and we have to be paying attention as they so often are. And so to that end, I think part of what it means is also shifting how we think of expertise, how we think of competency. And so another example that I'll share is an incredible woman, Peace Boulder, who works in Yemen, who was able to leverage her preexisting relationships with young men who are now part of various armed groups to negotiate detainee releases. She's a mother. She's known a lot of these young men since they were little boys. And the respect that they have for her in this context is something that she was able to leverage her peace, able to leverage for justice truly. And she is a middle-aged mom that our sector would so quickly have overlooked and has overlooked. And so even now that she can share her work, so often she has to ask to be included in these spaces because she isn't viewed as an expert because she doesn't hold XYZ titles or degrees. And so when we're thinking about women's inclusion, we're thinking about women's leadership around peace, both prevention and resolution, part of it is really us looking at ourselves and who are the women that we are considering as our experts. And so there are so many more that I could go to, but I am sensitive to time, so I'm going to pass it to my co-panelists. I'll just jump in really quickly to say, I wouldn't even name an example. I think every woman, I would just say it is Fatima sitting in Northern Nigeria where there is conflict and doing the best she can to help educate her neighbors, her family, and working in that community. So I think when it comes to women and peace and leadership, it is every woman exercising it in every corner where they sit. They just recently had in I think Bogota, Colombia, I don't have the details, almost one of the first women in peace building conference for Central and Latin America. And I was so excited to see it because it gives opportunity for Fatima sitting in Northern Nigeria or as well sitting somewhere else to say they can see role models, they can see how coalitions come together and bring voice to what they are all experiencing individually. So for me, I think every woman can be a leader in peace building and I wouldn't single out any person in particular. Yeah, I agree with everything that Shannon and Dorothy said. And so many women, great examples, but I don't want to actually give names right now. But I want to just say a few of my observations working with some of these women in the last two, three years at USIP. We have a project now and inclusive peace processes team on insiders, insider mediators facilitators. And a lot of the people that we are considering as successful insiders happen to be women. Because it's probably because what Shannon said, they are really in full grasp of the local indicators for conflict. They are so much connected to the communities. They understand the root causes of conflicts really well. And another thing that I really observed with working with women peace builders is they are very successful in building trust with conflict parties in their communities. And for this, sometimes they even take extra risk, where others like sometimes men that are expected to play these leadership roles, they refrain from taking these risks. But women actually, because they want to prove themselves and they really want to engage with these processes, they are really willing to take these additional risks, which really helps at the end to build trust with these communities. It has a disarming effect in a way, like these conflict parties, armed groups and communities, they're really surprised when they see a woman taking all that risk and going into the jungle and talking with them. So it really creates sort of like a cognitive perhaps dissonance and in that sense, very powerful. They're also very good at creating alternative channels for critical information gathering, for example. Because as we said, they're more grounded. So these are also some of the things I think women peace builders are really good at doing. I mean, I'm not saying this, I'm purely saying this based on my observation. I'm not saying this because there was a systematic research on this, but this is my observation with some of the women peace builders that we work with. Thank you all for those reflections. And many of us working in peace and development have a common goal of solidifying inclusion and cultivating meaningful allyship, particularly in the future of equity and inclusion for women in marginalized populations, so that these are inextricable from the work of peace building. And so I'll end this with kind of my final question. And this is a reminder to the audience that we are collecting questions so that we can move into a Q&A portion of this panel. But my final question for you all are what are some of the most effective steps you have seen to advance these goals and what steps do we still need to take? Maybe Dorothy, if you'd like to. I can start. Yeah. Tony, great question. And as I said, I will keep coming at it at the prevention from the prevention lens. And I think, you know, for women to have voice and bring agency, they need to be economically empowered. They need to have, you know, what is education, agency knowledge, but they need to also be able to be able to take care of their own lives in a manner that allows them to spread themselves over to this peace building, conflict resolution, conflict prevention space. So for me, it will be about just continuing to make sure that we're not just empowering women about, you know, giving them knowledge, you know, training capacity building. But what are they doing to make sure that, you know, they have good jobs, good knowledge, and that it's across the entire chain, you know, from women who may not be educated to the one who is the lawyer, who is the policymaker that across that spectrum, you know, there's representation.  So for me, it is really economic empowerment that will help and that will contribute to maintaining peace, but also allow people to come to the table with voice and agency that they might not have if they're coming to the table in a manner that people feel they cannot have the agency because they don't have the economic value that is necessary. And I just want to quickly end to say, once we talk about conflict as conflict, you know, in general conflict, you know, has two sides. It's an economic tool for some. And there is a cost to conflict, right? So there's an expense to those who suffer. And it is also a business for those who perpetrate it. So it is really, as we move forward, making sure that, you know, both sides of the issue are looked at really critically, but with an economic lens. Thanks, Dorothy. I'll continue. So I want to enter in this question. I want to go back to my point on symbolic inclusion, Tonis, because I think Liz mentioned and Shannon mentioned earlier in the event that we have come a long way in terms of increasing the quantity of women, right? The numbers are going up, but not necessarily the quality. So I think from now on, we really need to focus on enhancing the quality of women inclusion in peacebuilding. And with that, I think what we really need to tackle is the symbolic inclusion issue.  And this is a universal need, not just for women, but because it's been denied from women for a long time. This is why we're talking about this. What I mean by that is it needs to meet women's needs, the inclusion of women, it needs to meet women's needs, needs in terms of belongingness, a real belongingness, the need for belongingness, and also the need for uniqueness, right? These are established by research and social psychology, for example, as two key fundamental human needs. And the inclusion optimizes the satisfaction of these two essential needs at the same time. So for example, other things that look like inclusion may be, in fact, more like assimilation, right, in peacebuilding, meaning like, oh, we include you, but please act like men, something like that, right? This is assimilation, or it's symbolic inclusion, not real inclusion. Or sometimes it actually looks more like differentiation, what I call is differentiation. Yes, we include you, but please just talk about women's issues, you know, don't actually talk about security or law or justice or whatever, right? So we really need to spend a lot more effort to deal with these kinds of symbolic fake inclusion. And I see a lot of examples of this going on right now under what is called as women inclusion, I mean, can give so many examples, you know, to these, just being one of them, for example, in a conversation, I'm not going to talk about the context and the location, but in a conversation with a peace builder, sister working on the ground with communities in Africa, West Africa, she talked about the fact that in a lot of times, she cannot get her work done because the places she travels to are extremely non-hygienic, and the mission and the activities are totally designed according to men. And so she cannot go to these places when she has her period, for example, you know, there are a lot of issues that in a lot of these activities, a lot of these programs are designed basically around men's needs and around men and never really taking women's needs in consideration. So even though she's a great peace builder, you know, this kind of structural inequality is preventing her from doing her work.  This is another form of not exclusion, perhaps, but it is not real inclusion, recognizing that uniqueness needs of women. So we would like to be really included, treated as equal in this field with men, but we also, so we really need that sort of, we need to feel that belonging, but we also would like our unique characteristics, unique sort of needs to be recognized by people in the field. So I'll just end saying this and then thank you. Pass it on to Shannon. I think that's the perfect transition because what I wanted to talk about was justice and accessibility. And so exactly on that note, when we're talking about women's inclusion, what are the barriers that are potentially uncomfortable in our hyper-professional sector to name bathroom access as one of those barriers? Whether or not you can bring your child to any formal meeting, that is an incredible barrier to women's inclusion, and one that we can name and have named time and again. And yet we continue to create these hostile environments where you absolutely cannot bring a child. And therefore, we are losing, losing so many brains from being able to be present. And so I think when we're thinking about women's inclusion justice and accessibility are absolutely key aspects to this. In what ways is our system unjust? In what ways are we asking women to behave as men do? What ways are we asking women to deny parts of themselves that we have said do not belong in this sector? I'm thinking specifically about emotionality. I'm thinking about an emotional response, a more intuitive response to certain elements we undervalue and undermine women who bring these things to our two spaces, not recognizing the necessity one of emotions and trauma sensitivity in the work that we're doing, but also it is an incredibly hostile environment once again for a number of women, especially when we're talking about women of different cultures. And so finally, to end on the note about justice, I want to bring up a term intersectionality, which has been thrown around a few times in this conversation, but I think it's really, really key. We say we want women's inclusion. If we want the inclusion of women from various cultures and backgrounds, that means that we are going to have peace builders who will cry when they are talking about atrocities. That means that we are going to have peace builders who will not be comfortable going out for drinks after the formal meeting and who will therefore be excluded from some of these conversations. It means that we will have peace builders who again will have children present with them. And what are the ways that we are not only asking women to be like men, but we are asking women from across the world to behave as though they are able-bodied, to behave as though they are from the global North and specifically to behave as though they are white or Christian or and able to function in these systems and in these environments as we have created them. We need to think about our sector differently. We need to think about these barriers more expansively. And again, it comes back to asking people, why aren't you here? We meet incredible women every day. I think that's a privilege of a number of us who are on this call. What would it look like for us to ask them, why are you not present in these other meetings where your voice is invaluable? And when we hear why, bringing that up to those spaces and saying, I'm here, but here's who's missing and here's why they're missing. Thank you, Shannon. I think what you ended on is a fundamental paradigm shift in how we think about these spaces. And so I wanted, we've collected a couple of questions from our audience. We have about seven minutes to tackle these two questions. So I'll name both and anyone can respond to them. The first question is, how can colonial structures be broken down within peace building programs? Are Western leaders such as humanitarian implementers willing to give up power to local communities and women's groups? That's our first question. It got a lot of likes in the chat. Our second question has come from a kind of maybe a USG perspective, but I might broaden the aperture. And it's, do you believe that the establishment of a US cabinet or any cabinet level department of peace building would create infrastructure for change? And I'll just note that again, in the Columbia context, there is a ministry being built on gender and inclusion. And so if we need to think of that level or if it's just some sort of superficial thing that we think might make a difference in these issues. So I'll leave you out to tackle those two great questions. Tonya, I can jump in really quickly on the first question around the colonial aspects and power. I think from where I sit, there's a lot of talk from Northern NGOs, they want to give power to the global south. And I think it's all talk. And it is so important that global north NGOs actually first acknowledge that they have the power, there's that denial. Then when they acknowledge that they have it authentically, then they come to the table so that those in the global south can share and come with their own suggestions of what they think this looks like, where they are. So I think for me, the answer to that question is really the work in the sector is still very colonial, is going to take real action and we're not there. And I would not be shy to say most people just talk and they're not working the talk. Talk is one thing, action is another thing. And for action to take place, it really means certain people really actually do need to get off the table.  So it is something that it's pertinent. And I don't work in a peace preventive, you know, in a conflict preventing organization, I work in economic development, we face the same issues. And so love to hear what my colleagues were directly with his building, you don't have to say. I would love to chime in on this. When it comes to colonial structures, I think, firstly, we need to acknowledge that colonial structures are not solely responsible for existing exclusion of women. I think it's very comfortable for a number of us to blame colonial structures. And the truth is, a number of contacts functioned in a way where women were excluded previously. One thing that I do think we need to name is that colonial structures spread that globally and made that the norm and then reinforce that dynamic. And I think as we as we're thinking about power Dorothy, you're right, there is a there are a lot of conversations happening right now about what it means to shift power. And I really do not agree that we have the ability to give anybody power. I think power is an innate thing. Now, how the ability to wield that power is where we see some of the some of those main differences. But I really, I really think that one of the necessary paradigm shifts in our sector is what we think we have the power to do. You know, I think oftentimes those of us who are working on peace and, you know, conflict prevention here in the global north, we tend to think that if we are present, our power is going to be enough of a deterrent that conflict will not break out or that, you know, peace will occur. And we've we've seen that that's not that's not truly the case. And so we need to think a little bit more expansively about what does it actually mean to utilize our power? And what and what power are we are we hoping to use? Again, women who have access to their communities, who can reach individuals who can reach experts that we can never hope to reach, is that not in of itself a form of power? And so when we're thinking about the sector, we're thinking about colonialism, part of the challenge is that we are still defaulting to our old ways of thinking, when it comes to who needs to lead, what leadership even looks like, and also what peace and justice look like, we are still continuing to to frame those things within our own, using our own paradigms and our own frameworks. And I think we need to be willing to be more creative, to be more humble. And to Dorothy's point, we need to be willing to no longer always be present, because we aren't always a value add. And so for that, it means, you know, we talk about working ourselves out of a job. Well, maybe we need to rethink what our job is. Is it one of accompaniment? Is it one of leadership? Is it one of financing? That last one is not as popular for us to remove ourselves from, you know, working on the ground and taking a more primarily financial approach to engaging with local communities. Now that isn't to say that's what everybody wants or the best solution, but it is to say that we should be asking these questions if we truly want, you know, systemic changes. Yeah, maybe I'll take on the last question, second question, because Dorothy and Shannon already, I think gave really good answers to the first one. The question about a US cabinet level department on peace building, would it create any change? I will respond to this question, but I really don't know the answer. Maybe it will, maybe it will not. But I would like to actually, because I'm a researcher and I usually like answering these questions based on evidence or data, but I would like to share one thing and not necessarily about a cabinet, but at least another structure of inclusion or modality of inclusion that has been found to be very effective in creating durable peace is commissions that are set up in an inclusive manner. And these are not necessarily permanent bureaucratic structures, but these are commissions, small groups basically, right, committees, commissions that are set up for a specific task to accomplish a specific task. And these commissions are formed in a very inclusive manner. And in a very recent research with Dan Druckmann, we found out that actually this kind of modality, if a commission is set up in an inclusive manner to include the different voices within a peace process, it has the highest impact on durable peace. And we're currently looking into why this is the situation. And you can actually find a lot of examples of this, like Liberia, for example, there were about 12 commissions, and most of these commissions were set up in an inclusive manner, including women, including civil society, et cetera. And it is today actually Liberia ranks quite high in terms of durable peace compared to some other places that have gone through violent conflict. Similarly, South Africa, the peace process in South Africa set up these inclusive commissions. And these were connected, they were set up at different levels, local regional levels, et cetera. And they were very well connected with each other. And again, South Africa is, I think we will all agree that is another success story that we saw. So I guess, not maybe, you know, I don't know about creating a huge bureaucracy, whether it is useful. But I can say that there is some evidence from research suggesting that state committees or commissions that are set up in an inclusive manner are very successful in creating durable peace. Thank you, Ezra. I want to turn over the last couple of minutes to Dr. Kathleen Kenist. She is the director of gender policy and strategy at the US Institute of Peace, and also leads the Institute's grants and fellowships program as a sociocultural anthropologist. Dr. Kenist co-edited the volume of women and more power and protection in the 21st century. So Kathleen, if you could give us some kind of closing reflections from what you've heard today. I know it's a big task, but we welcome those comments. Thank you so much, Tonis. Wonderful job moderating and greetings to the three panelists, Ezra, Dorothy, and Shannon. It has been a stimulating conversation, one that I think really identified some key problems and opportunities, I think, as Tonis framed the conversation. You all have really talked about how women do exercise agency in many of the issues, especially in the context of conflict. But we continue need to ask the question of which women are excluded from what spaces and how do we help women remove these barriers or obstacles while they are seeking a meaningful participation while securing the peace in their communities, in their countries. I think it got very complicated as Dorothy amplified, we really do need to have a better understanding of power dynamics. The astute question about colonial structures, I think, took it to a new level of conversation. One that I think each of you and specifically Ezra kept coming back to is how we named these things. I've been listening to Tim Snyder's lectures on Ukraine. One of the things that historian talks about is we don't learn a language. We become the language and really we do have problems, whether it is a colonial or patriarchal or as we've been talking about symbolic inclusions. All of these are new processes to help us identify this issue of power, as Dorothy mentioned. And Shannon, what power do we have to do what? I mean, you kept our feet to the fire on many of these problems, both globally but within our own organizations, so much harder to look at ourselves than to look outward. So I appreciate each of your dynamic contributions to this conversation that I think is really critical as we move forward in what we all know as the women, peace and security agenda. How do we really incorporate these unique perspectives, diverse contributions of women into justice, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility? One that the latter, the A, has been often left out of our conflict studies, our conflict prevention efforts. In conclusion, I think you all know USIP's mission is to end violent conflict, but we also know that nothing changes the society faster than violence. And we know as well that in these social upheavals, gender roles change and in most instances, roles become less equal. This is a major challenge in our work. And we have to keep coming back to the research, the data, and I will bring up Women's Stats Project out of Texas A&M that has established a key correlation between a country's gender equity and equality and its relative level of peacefulness. This is a reason why we must continue to do more research, why we need to have these conversations, tough ones at that. Thinking about this, and as we conclude, I watched the time carefully here, I do want to invite you all to continue this conversation next week.  He is going to present his report on protecting gender and sexual minorities during armed conflict. I think this is a part of a story that we didn't quite touch on today, but I'm excited that we are able to bring this conversation into next week. Finally, USIP invites you to view the stories of this year's six finalists for its annual Women Building Peace Award. These women have shown extraordinary commitment, leadership, peacebuilding practice, while working in some of the toughest countries and settings in the world. Colombia, Syria, Uganda, and Yemen. Please join us also on November 30th when USIP will award the final recipient for this year's award. Again, thank you for joining us today. Congratulations to this brilliant panel, and thank you, Joseph, Sonny, and Liz, for your remarkable opening comments. Thank you all, and back to Thomas. Thank you, Kathleen, and thank you to Ezra, Dorothy, Shannon, Joseph Sonny, Liz Hume, and Lindy Tercyn for leading the JDEIA conversation here. Thank you for your brilliant remarks, and thank you for the audience who tuned in. Have a wonderful day.


Life is out there. But what if there was a new way to explore our world? From street corners to the far corners of the Earth? What if nothing held us back? What if, what if, became what's next? It's our future. Now let's go find it.


You are the man behind the biggest shrimp farming here in West Africa. Yes sir. How does it feel to be the owner of this shrimp farming? It's so amazing. I mean, I can't tell how it all started and then where we are today. It's so, so, so much amazing. You were born and raised in Ghana? Yes sir. In and out, yes. And what happened? Like you lived in Ghana all your life or what? No, I've been in Japan and then after some time I decided to come home and then, you know, start my team. And that is how it all started, yes. Wow. Yes. So what is the inspiration behind shrimp farming? Because all I know is to lap your farming. A lot, a lot of people when you mention shrimp and they even... Oh, what a... Are you talking of the smaller red one that we eat with Kenke? Yes. And I said, no, no, no, these ones are big. And they said, how do they look like? And then I said, look, I've lived in Japan and this is the delicacy.  So how come you guys don't know? So, you know, the university came in and then we started the pilot and then now it's history because now we are spreading all over Africa about this project, the shrimp farm project because look at our water bodies. When I looked at it when the university came and we were going around, we were looking at our water bodies. Our lands are virgin, water not contaminated and that is what shrimp likes. I mean, like, this is mind blowing. But the water I'm seeing, I don't know where does the water come from? It comes here. We are in the middle of the sea and the river. So the mixture of sea and river is what we are using at this point. We are blessed. Is that the technique behind it? That is the technique behind it because... So you can't use river alone? No, you can't use river alone. No, you need a mixture of sea and we call it brackish water. And that is the water that is meant for shrimp production. So everything we do here, you need a mixture before it will happen. I mean, I'm kind of confused because I don't know whether you went to school to learn how to do fish. How do you call it? Shrimp farming. How did you learn it? So along the way, you see now we are, thank God, I mean, we are in the era of information.  I mean, yes, I go to the professors, those are doing marine to learn, study from them. And I do my own research too. You know, we're in the era of Professor Google. So Google helped you? It does a lot. Google is your friend, yeah? It does a lot. Let me know, how many acres in here? Now here we have 38 acres here. But the bigger project we have over 1200 acres that we want to start. In fact, we've started constructing the pond. I read this, I mean, before I came in here. They said you have the Garnes New Oil. Exactly, it is the Garnes New Oil. It is more than lucrative.  Shrimp Farm gives you 100% profit. Wow. Yes, it does. But how many shrimps do you have? Here alone, we have three tons that we are going to harvest. You know, 3,000 kg. I'm not a good mathematician, but you do the mass, multiply it by 10 or 11 dollars because now the sizes we have, the market price is between 11 and 12 dollars. We are hoping that December it will shoot to 15. So we are waiting to see when it is December, then we get 15 to 16 dollars. So if you do the mass, you have three tons here. If you have 2,000 pounds, that each has 3 pounds, 3,000 kg, you do the mass. Wow, now I believe it's the Garnes New Oil. It is. Wow. It is. But I just want to know, did you start this alone? I started it with, like I told you, the university started and then I picked it up. But now I'm doing it alone. Wow. I'm doing it alone. It's capital intensive, very, very intensive, but you know, the most I've been good so far. We've been able to manage. But since you're saying it's creative, don't you think you need people to support you? I need more than more than more than people, more than support.  You name it. I mean, fund management, whoever can, whatever, whatever to expand the business because the opportunity is here. Like I told you, fine, Southeast Asia are doing their thing. But you see, they started 40, 50 years ago and you can tell how contaminated, excuse me to say, but yeah, their land is now gone. Yeah, but here we are, Virgin land, water's clean, which is what the shrimp wants. What else? And the hard work, the good side of it is that the investor who will be coming, we've already done the hard work. Everything is set for him to come and start making his money. So it's a done deal. I would love to see some of the shrimp before we continue. Surely, surely, surely, surely. Let me get my guys, they will come right now and then we'll get it done. One of the staff who is going to handle the harvest, I mean, he will demonstrate how we harvest the shrimp from the pond and this is what we do. We wash them, we take them slowly, quietly and then we do the packing. So throw it. Oh, okay. Yes. So this is how we do in maybe five minutes, you'll see what will come out of this net that we just threw. Five minutes is up, let's see what we got. All right. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. There they come. Oh, that one has a stick. Yes, yes. Oh, okay. Ah, yes. That's a lot. So reach it. Okay, let me show you this one. Oops. That is Black Tiger Shrimp Monodon. So what type of fish? I keep on saying fish, fish. What type of shrimp are you doing? Monodon. We do Black Tiger. This is, the Botanical name is Monodon. Is it the most expensive? The most expensive shrimp. Yes. Wow. It's fresh. It's fresh and healthy. I can eat this raw. Yes, I do too. But my guys, they will run when you start eating it raw. You live in Asia, you have to eat it. So look at it. Look at the size and look at how healthy they are. As for the taste, it speaks for itself. I have to try it out. I have to try it out. But how do you feed them? Okay. Like I told you, I will take you to one of our guys. Then you see it. So which means that you have people that you work with? Yes, I have people that I work with. You train them? Yes, we train them. We train them. They are locals. We train them. And they are all over the pond. They are actually creating employment in Begada. We are doing and we want to do more. And this is what will create opportunity for Ghanians for them to stop traveling outside. Taking all the risk in going to Europe through those devious means. But you know when we were growing up, you told us that shrimp farming, fish farming, farming is for poor people. Unfortunately, we've been misled. But... We've been misled. Farming is a thing of the day. Imagine corona came. People were still eating, isn't it? Exactly. Yeah, we had lockdowns. You are in the house. You still eat, isn't it? Yeah. So we've been misled. I just want to know, yeah. I don't know if you want to tell me. When I came here, I've not seen any baby shrimp. I've just seen baby shrimp all over. What do you gather? Okay, it's a top secret. We have a hatchery. Where we hatch. So this is about 3 kg. Just one net. And we have 3 kg. I just want to know, yeah. Do you just sell this in Ghana? Yes, we sell in Ghana and we sell to neighboring countries. Abidjan and Togo. And one other place that they call us. Madagascar called us. Yes, Madagascar called us. Most of my audience are not in Africa alone. Okay. They're all over the place. Sure. On my channel, we say it's by force to support an African business. Sure. So I'm going to tell them that it's by force for them to order the shrimps from you. To order the shrimps and to invest in expanding the business. That is fantastic. Fantastic. If you want to order the shrimps, you have to contact the numbers on your screen. You also want to invest in this shrimp farming. Contact the numbers on your screen. You're not going to talk to me. You're going to talk to him directly. Sure. And yeah. Can I, I want to see that hatching. Sure. I'll take you there. Thank you. So we're just coming from the blue stock. Okay. We saw the male and female. Yeah. Okay. So when they produce eggs and then the pears are ready. Then we transferred them into these ponds. So this pond. I'm trying to tell me that with all the shrimp that we see there. Yes. It was just from these two people. Just from these two. Two shrimps. Two shrimps. Two shrimps. And this is what they give us. What you are seeing now are the shrimps. You are the shrimps. Yes. These are the shrimps. How many eggs they lay? They lay between 1 million to 3 million. Eggs. Let me repeat again. Between 1 million. Just that one. Just that one. Between 1 and 3 million. So what we have here is between 1.5 to 2.5 million babies.  A month. Maximum a month. And then we transfer them to the production pond. Growth pond. There is another question that I did not ask. Sure. So we have like how many stages? From getting the blue stalk from the male and female. From the eggs. When they lay the eggs it comes to 1 pond there and then when the babies are ready the peels then it comes. So in all these 4 stages? 4 stages. But I'm not seeing a cold storm because I know when shrimps are out of water. Yes. They don't survive for a long time. Sure. So we are done from the harvesting. There's a cold room that we pack the shrimp. Can we see where the cold room is? Definitely. I'm going to show you where the cold room is. This is the cold room. Wow. This is where we stalk everything that comes from the pond. This is where we stalk them. And then from here? From here it goes outside. You did an amazing job. Thanks a lot. And I just want to say that congratulations for building the biggest shrimp farm. I mean shrimp farming here in Ghana. Thank you. But I just also want to ask you do you believe that Africa is the future? It is. It is more than the future. We have everything here. This is where life started. So why is it not the future? Everything is here and I'm sending this message to all the brothers in Diaspora that look we can make it. Once life started here what it is that we can do here? But hey we all left and we are coming back. If we are coming back you cannot tell me that when you started your shrimp farming you never faced any challenges. Can you just let me know what are some of the difficulties that you faced when you started? It's just like in any other country. There are challenges in starting a business. Stand those challenges, overcome those challenges and then you move on. Yes, you asked me a question. The direct thing I'll tell you is that yes there are challenges. Yes, what are the challenges? Mindset, of course you have to train these kids slowly, slowly. You can't expect them to pick it up today.  Like you saw my guys over there. You will see some very soon. We are training them and they are coping. We are getting there. I just want to say thank you so much for talking to me and wish you all the best.  Thank you. So if they come in here let me know that. I would definitely know you. Thank you Hoda Maia. I appreciate it. Then keep up the good work.


I just wanted to show you just something different from these UDL additions. So I've opened up one, it's just a Shakespeare poem. So if we go to the poem, notice these little, this is what digital can do so easily. Uh-oh, where's that little pointer thingy? What is showing here, see these little things here, little scribe, I keep forgetting that that actually, that's a key press.  So it's got the little plus sign meaning, give me some more resources. It's got some brain things that say, help me stop and think about this. Help me some, give me some strategy support. So that's the difference between those two things. But the, what are you doing, Grace? I'm just pointing that. Oh, pointing it, oh, good. I thought Grace was trying to get me to hurry. No, I was trying to get her to hurry. So those are an additional thing which you can embed. One of the things that people who teach English are interested in is students learning the literary devices. How are things made by authors? And what's just, I like visually to see that every one of those little things there is a literary device and that just on seeing it you realize, oh my gosh, that's what makes Shakespeare what everybody loves is he's got a million literary devices. So if I just click on it, it'll highlight it and it will tell me what it is. It's a simile, blah, blah, blah, you learn about similes. But this is a very friendly way to let a student just explore it. So I can choose another one. It's that one, a personification. And you go through everyone, but what you see is, oh my gosh, Shakespeare is using the language so beautifully that everything is a literary device which is different than an information source which has almost none of those. It doesn't have any literary devices. It's just trying to tell you something. But Shakespeare is saying it's the language itself that he wants you to enjoy and so it's just full and full of a metaphor and explains the metaphor, blah, blah, blah. So it's soon all books, excuse the expression, will be like this where there's many ways to get in for many different kinds of learners at the right level for them. You don't have to click on anything if you don't want to, but there are options there. Look at the end. There's like three literary devices right in the last sentence. It's just amazing. And I have to say, just like that music piece I played for you, if you read Shakespeare like this, it actually enriches you. You go, wow, I didn't even know how he did that in the same way that the visual let you see how Bach made that music. But just putting these in there gives kids a sense of, wow, that's what made Shakespeare great was he put all these things in there that I didn't even notice. It's fabulous. I just want to make the parallel with the music analogy. And there's a lot more other things that are done in this, but you can play with them.


Stock futures are flat this morning in the pre-market trading hours. Sustaining the rally from yesterday, all three major indexes have been fluctuating within less than a tenth of a percentage point this morning. And this comes as major data on the services sector and job market is expected to be released later on today. Crude oil prices have dropped to their lowest point since May, thanks in part to lowering demand and recession fears. West Texas Intermediate Crude, which is an American oil benchmark, closed below $100 for the first time in months. Natural gas prices in Europe are nearing a four-month high, however. Production in Norway is being slowed by labor strikes at oil fields in the area. Workers are staging major walkouts over wage disputes. Those strikes are anticipated to escalate at the end of this week, potentially reducing Norwegian gas exports by over 50%. Meanwhile, there is growing speculation that the U.S. will lift tariffs against China. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says that there is no timeline in place now, but that President Biden is looking at options. U.S. Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen met with her Chinese counterpart this week, and the markets rallied briefly in anticipation of any news. That follows a dip Friday as the second quarter ended as the worst first half of the year in over 50 years. So Melissa Armo, founder and owner of the Stocksmoosh, is here to discuss more. So glad that you are here. So I presume lifting tariffs is so that we can at least pay less for some of these Chinese goods. Would lifting tariffs make much of a difference? It would be like putting a bandaid on a much larger problem, just like the idea of getting rid of the federal gas tax. It's such a small percentage. So the problem is that, again, inflation is almost at 9%, 8.6%. Who knows what it's going to be by the next month? It's just too much. Lifting tariffs is just a bandaid. It will give some relief. But again, it's only on certain items. It's not going to be on everything. And the whole idea of putting the tariffs on in the first place was because we're competing with China. As a world power, China charges tariffs. We're not talking about lifting their tariffs on U.S. goods, to be honest with you. And actually, again, Trump, the reason that he put the tariffs on, when President Trump did it, was because he was trying to get people in America to work and buy Americans. So that's the problem. And again, I think it's going to be a small, small fixed pennies, pennies on the dollar for what people are really paying for most of the things that they're buying right now, which is, again, almost 9%. So Vlad always says to me, right, if you liked a stock at $100, you should love it at $50, right? That this could be a buying opportunity. But I got to tell you, I was one of those people that thought it would be fun to play around in the stock market at the beginning of the pandemic because prices of stocks went down. And now that I look at sort of the length of my investment, which has only been like a couple of years now, I see that many of the stocks that I bought are actually lower than they were during the height of the pandemic. And that is freaking me out a little. I don't want to spend more. I don't want to buy more of them. I just want to sort of, you know, conserve. Are there opportunities here? And do you have any sort of advice for people who want to take advantage of what we're seeing right now happening in the stock market? Well, first of all, don't freak out. You're going to be fine. You're very young. And if you're looking to buy stocks, then you're looking to buy them for the long term, especially if it's an investment opportunity where you're looking to buy and hold something for many, many years or something like your retirement account. As far as opportunities, you have to focus on stocks that are strong right now. There are a lot of things that have fallen off and many of them are the tech stocks like Netflix and Facebook and even Apple has fallen. But the good news is that earnings season starts next week. The banks are the first to report. And they will be the precursor to what really happens in the upcoming month with earnings season. What probably is going to happen is stocks companies are going to report and say that things were good maybe last quarter, but they're predicting maybe a negative return in the last part of the year. Because again, we're having so much problems with inflation where people are not buying as many things. I would wait until the earnings season. I would probably wait until closer to the end of this year because at this point there's so much going on right now. It's not just inflation. It's the war in Ukraine that is also causing some of the inflation and it's very difficult to predict the bottom. It's very difficult to predict the top. Don't even try to do it and don't feel bad if you can't. The long and short of it is if you love a company and you love what they do, for example, Apple, you buy their iPhones, you love them, buy the stocks that you love that are strong, that are going to hold through any downturn in the market because eventually the market's going to come back. But to be honest with you, it may not be before the end of this calendar year. We may have another six months of selling off. So that's what's going to be my next question. What's your prediction for the next six months if the first half of the year was so dismal? Well, I think the next six months are going to be challenging for the market and I don't think the market's going to make it brand new all-time high at all this year in 2022, which it hasn't done for several years. I also think that if the market's going to recover, it's going to be the late part of this calendar year. Like I said, people talk about a Christmas rally and maybe not this starting season, but the latter part of the year. And again, we just have to stop selling off. Like you were discussing the fact that we rallied yesterday. Guess what? In the last five minutes now, this morning, we are down again. We're selling off. Every single time the market rallies, it can hold it even from more than 20 to 48 hours. And that's problematic. It says that people are scared. They're panicking and they don't really want to hold on to the long positions for too long. Just like you said, you're panicking. Why? Because you're worried that things are going to get worse and therefore then you don't want to lose money.  All right. Melissa Armo, I won't panic. Deep breaths. Thank you very much. Thank you.


Now, a reward has been posted for the apprehension of Mr. Hyde. Now, Mr. Hyde has disappeared, never to be seen again. Now, Dr. Jekyll no longer has to seclude himself. He has been out interacting, socializing with friends, and been doing so for the last few months. And then one day, he secludes himself again. This goes on for several days. Now, Mr. Utterson was wondering what was going on and he decides to see his friend, Dr. Lanyon. Now, Dr. Lanyon's health had deteriorated significantly. And Mr. Utterson wonders about the relationship between Dr. Jekyll and his deteriorated health. And when asked about it, Dr. Lanyon angrily says, I do not want to talk about it. So, Mr. Utterson decides to go home. And he writes a letter to Dr. Jekyll asking him why he's in seclusion. And why is he cut off from his friends? Dr. Jekyll responds with, I must isolate myself because of these dangerous goings-ons. And then a couple of weeks later, Dr. Lanyon dies. Now, Mr. Utterson gets a letter from Dr. Lanyon with instructions not to open the letter until either Dr. Jekyll dies or disappears. Mr. Utterson really wanted to read that letter. But he agreed to follow the instructions and follow it away. Mr. Utterson wanted to visit Dr. Jekyll to ask him about these strange occurrences.


Hello, this is Laptop Media, and today, we will show you how to open the AMD version of Lenovo Legion 716 and what's inside of it. To access this laptop's internals, you need to undo a total of 10 Philips head screws. Then, pry the bottom panel, starting from the front, and lift the panel away from the chassis. Please remember, it would be of great help to us if you just hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. That would motivate us to make even more and better videos for you. This device sports a 99.9Wh battery pack. Weirdly, it lasts only for 5 hours of web browsing, or 30 minutes more of video playback. To take it out, you will need to unplug the connector from the motherboard. Then, undo the two SSD cooling plates, and the six Philips head screws that keep the battery in place. Memory-wise, you get two Sodom slots for DDR5 RAM, working at 4800 MHz in dual-channel mode. As for the storage, there are two M.2 PCIe X4 slots, which support Gen4 SSDs. In terms of cooling, you get one chunky vapor chamber, connected to four heat sinks, and two fans. If you'd like to see more disassembly videos of the latest notebooks we would highly appreciate if you hit the like button and subscribe to the channel.


Hello everyone this is financial author Amit Dan of AmitDan.com. On this channel you'll find financial travel and more videos just like the one you're watching right now. If you like what you see please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing. Hello everyone this is AmitDan of AmitDan.com. On this channel you'll find financial travel and more videos just like the one you're watching right now. If you like what you see please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing. Today I'll be unboxing and doing a brief review of the Rode Video Micro Compact on Camera Microphone. The sound system or sound recording system which comes with the camera or handy camera. Usually they're not that good and in order to enhance your sound system or sound recording and make better videos. An additional microphone just like the one I have here Rode Video Micro would be a good idea to enhance the sound better and make greater videos. Now this camera this microphone is Rode it's a very popular one and it's designed and made in Australia. For example if we look at the box and here you can see that Australian made and owned. Now before I start opening the box I'd like to mention a few things about this microphone. This microphone is not an omnidirectional microphone what it means that it wouldn't capture sound from all directions. This is a front direction this is a directional microphone what it means that it would capture sound whoever or whatever is in front of the camera from a specific direction. And there are situations when you don't want an omnidirectional microphone you don't want to capture sound from everywhere you just want from a specific subject or object. For example if you're doing an interview or if you are vlogging or if you are recording something specific then you'd need a microphone which is a directional microphone just like this one. And other important thing I'd like to mention that this microphone does not need any battery so we have to just plug it into your camera or handy camera's 3.55 millimeter microphone socket. And then it would take power from that socket so what it means that your camera has to have the capability to supply the power or the camera has to have built-in plug-in power capability. Now there are specific cameras which wouldn't work with this microphone and I was checking Rhodes website and they have a list of cameras which would not work with this microphone. So before you buy this I would recommend to check whether the camera you have is on that list or do more research because it may not work with your camera but in most cases it would work with most of the video or recent cameras whichever has a sound input system. Okay so now let's go through the specs a little bit more here. So this is the box and this is one side and here's the some specs. Two-year warranty, no battery required, Rycote suspension mount included and included Fari windshield. And here we have the same thing so we can just start unboxing and see what's in here. Okay so let's start from here. Okay so it's able to cut the packaging tape and taking this out here. Okay looks like there's nothing else in the box so just leave the box here for now and this is the whole thing inside the box. Now let's open this up. I'm trying to figure out whether I need to cut anything or if this is just to come off. Okay so there's no need to cut anything. So looks like it just come off like this and here this one looks like the Rycote shock mount. So basically the microphone sits in here and this one just protects the microphone from shock or vibration when you're walking or recording. Okay so I'll leave it here and we have a cable so this one looks like just take a look here. Okay so this is just 3.5 millimeter audio cable that would go into the mic and into your camera. Just leave it here for now and here we have a small brochure. Let's open it up. Okay what I can see here that the cable is a mono output so this would not record a stereo sound. However you do not need a stereo sound quality when you're talking or doing interview or other general stuff. And then it's in different languages so I'll just put it aside for now. And okay so here we have the wind breaker or dead cat or windshield whatever you call it. Looks like it's made of synthetic material and this basically protects your microphone from wind. Wind noise or wind sound or any other ambient noise or basically any background noise you need to concentrate on your subject noise or subject sound rather than wind sound or other background distractions. Okay so now this one looks like the microphone so we'll just take it out here. Okay so here is what we have. So this is a very tiny compact microphone and due to the fact that it's so compact this is good for traveling or whenever you're just doing video outdoor. And so the way it would work you have to stick in one part of the audio cable here and then the other part would go into the camera. And then you put it here on this light coat shock mount. Let me see here.  And then you mount it on your camera or handy cams hot shoe mount. So this is the frontal look and you can see that you know if there's vibrational shock then this shock proof mount would protect the camera from shock or vibration. Okay now by the look of it it looks like you may need to buy additional hot shoe mount if your camera doesn't have the capability or the feature to stick it this way. So what I'll do I'll just you know set everything up with my camera and see if I have the necessary hot shoe mount and how it works with the camera. And then I'll do some outdoor audio sound testing with the mic and with cameras own mic and then I'll post it all together. Okay so this is the end of part one and then once I do the part two which is going to be outdoor testing then you'll be able to see and compare how does it perform and I'll give you more features or more thoughts on how this product is. Thank you. Today I'll be doing outdoor testing of the RODE microphone video micro compact on camera microphone but before I do that I'd like to show you something. The microphone itself which is this one right here it would be attached to right here on the right court suspension mount and it should be right here but this suspension mount is very tight. So when you actually fit in right here in this position it gives a feeling that it's going to break because it's not moving anywhere so you have to just like you know put pressure or force it to put it on the mount in this position. And while doing that I was afraid that it's going to break but nothing happened so it's all in good order and should be right in this position. Now if you have a video camera or if you have a handy camera like this one which I have Sony this is Sony CX405 and if you have a camera like this then the RODE video micro pro is not going to be attached on top of your video micro on top of your video camera because right here there's nothing to hold this video micro on top of it or there's no shim out so for that reason you need a separate piece of attachment what is called a flash bracket. Now I'll go ahead and show you the flash bracket which is right here so let's open this box. So you need to buy this piece only if you have a camera or a video camera which doesn't have a shim out on top of here so you're going to have to need this piece. And what it does that it has a socket on the bottom and you attach it to your camera right here this way where you mount your tripod or monopod so this section of this flash bracket go right here. So you attach it right here and then on this part there's a shim out where you can attach your video micro just this way so for example you take your video micro and you put it this way. Okay so it takes a little time like this so put it this way and then you have to just you know tighten up this one here and then it holds on top of it this way so just like this and then once you attach your camera this way then you have actually it's going to be like this. Okay so once you attach your camera on here and then you have your shim out right here then you can do the video this way and it will absorb or capture the sound and you can even put your dead cat on top of it. And so the camera stays here and then if you open it up okay so the camera is going to be attached here and your shim out is going to be attached here let me just move my camera a little bit. So here's the better picture okay so this is going to stay this way so you stick your camera this way and then your video micro is this way so that's the piece you need if your camera doesn't have any shim out on top of it. So this piece is called flash bracket you can purchase this this is very cheap and then I figured out there's another way if you buy a hot shoe adapter or you can stick it right here or hot shoe attachment then I believe you can attach this piece right here as well. However this is going to like you know put back the microphone backwards and this is going to be awkward way so the best solution to attach this to a video camera is to buy this piece which is called flash bracket. You should be able to get it on Amazon between 10 to 20 dollars so it's not that expensive at all so this is a separate piece you need if you have a video camera or a handy camera. So this is all about setting up the video micro compact on top of your video camera so now I'll do the outdoor voice testing or some quality testing and then I'll attach that clip all together thank you.  And right now you're hearing me through the rode video micro pro and it has the dead cat attached to it which should cancel the wind and you should be able to hear my voice clear than the video micro cameras built in camera. So after this testing actually I do not have I have no idea right now that whether how job the rode video micro pro is doing I'm just talking looking at the camera and I'm about two three feet in front of the camera. So once we do the video then I'll be able to compare by myself at home when I listen both of the sounds and then you'll be able to also compare them. What difference does it make or if there's any difference at all between the rode video micro compact on cam camera microphone with the dead cat and without the rode video micro pro. So that's all for now thank you for watching and please hit the subscribe button and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up see you soon thank you.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com. Happy Wednesday, happy new release day. A lot of fun new releases today, including 2022 National Treasures World Cup Soccer. So this is the random number block randomizer video for pick your team five. That's coming up in the next video. Featuring these teams right here, that's how it works if you're not familiar with it. Big thanks to this group for making it happen. There are the numbers right there and let's roll it, randomized names, number six and a three, nine times. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and ninth and final time. After nine, we got Matthew down to Carl. Six and a three, nine times for the numbers. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and ninth and final time. At nine, at down to eight. All right, so Matthew with nine, Carl with six, one and four, Brian with two, James with zero. So you'll get any and all redemptions for those countries right there, including one-of-one redemptions. Carl still gets live one-of-ones. So James with zero, Carl also has seven and three, Matthew with five, Carl with eight. Let's order these numerically and coming up in the next video will be the break itself, jaspyscasebreaks.com. Bye-bye.


Appalachian Wireless has a plan to make your life simpler. It's called forward pay. No contract, no credit check, no problem. Plans start at $19.99 a month and include unlimited talk and text or ticket to the max with unlimited data plus for only $89.99, which has 50 gig of high-speed data because we are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. While trading card games and tabletops are considered niche interests, there are dedicated players who may get a lifestyle. At the gaming company in Coal Run, there has been a resurgence of weekly game nights for any and all to participate in, with each night of the week offering something new for the community. They've grown a lot since we first started them. Everybody needed to start getting out, I guess. You really, with the pandemic going on, everybody kind of stayed in. And I guess it took a little bit of time to get everybody actually coming out and getting actually into that spirit again. Started out a little slow. And then I know with Marvel Champions, the night I've seen specifically most of, it started out with maybe one full table. My dad made a full table. And the last event that I saw, there was three, maybe four full tables of people out here at night. Magic scene I've heard has been doing pretty good. Every other night it's been picking up from what I've heard. I know just me personally being here, seeing everybody out playing Marvel Champions or Magic or Pokemon. Hearing everybody laugh about and everything, I used to work for another business in the area where we hosted FNM and had Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! stuff. And it was always good to see people out and having fun playing games, board games, whatever it may be. Just, it's a different experience than being on your computer playing online versus being at a table and seeing everybody, having some snacks and drinks and just having a good time with it. The main goal of having so many different game nights throughout the week is to give everyone involved something to look forward to. The gaming company is placing an emphasis on creating a friendly environment for their longtime patrons and newcomers. As the games being showcased continue to grow in popularity, so does the appreciation for the players. People's been loving it. We have a big amount of traffic nowadays, especially a lot of the gamers coming in, like, it's helping to store a big time, buying cards, buying the gear for the game they're playing. And yeah, the community seems to be loving it. They're coming here to talk about through the week how excited they are for the day coming up and how they can't wait to tell all their friends to come play with them.  You know, everybody's here really friendly and like all the newcomers to the game, a lot of newcomers come here, that's never played the game, just heard about it. And we have a really good group of people that come in and are willing to teach the community how to play because they let everybody here love seeing, you know, people get introduced and just new gamers, it's great. Reporting from Mountain Top News, I'm Nick Colum.