If you would please turn with me to Exodus chapter 20 and this is the last sermon on the Ten Commandments. The title of the sermon is You Shall Not Covet. I hope to go through an intro introduction. What God forbids in this commandment is unholy coveting and discontentment. Three, what God requires holy coveting and contentment and then four, Christ and five application. Before reading the command there are several things that I believe must be said.  God never has and never will need you for his existence or delight or satisfaction though he does delight in his creation and his people. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are one and depend on nothing. God is absolutely and eternally unchangeable and self-sufficient.  Nothing has or can ever improve him or better him because he is who he is, God. But you, you are puny and frail and unable to do anything without God's power upholding your life and mind. God is the Creator, the Lord of all and the only Savior.  As it is written there is none good, no, not one. But praise God. Praise the Lord. God provides for the needy sinner out of his own goodness. He eternally saves a multitude which no man can number. He has blotted out the sins of his people and dressed us in Christ's righteousness for his namesake. And Jesus said rivers of living water would flow out of the hearts of his disciples because they would receive the Holy Spirit. Therefore you as image bearer, as his image bearer, as a child of God are to be content, sufficient and abounding in him, by him and for him. In Christ you are to be a fountain of living water, loving God and your neighbor and not a dried up well, covetous and discontent. Jehovah is your God. Therefore you shall not covet. Let's read the commandment. Exodus chapter 20 verse 17. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.  I'd like to talk about the context briefly. If you look at Exodus 19 verses three through six and Moses went up to God and the Lord called to him from the mountain saying thus you so say to the house of Jacob, tell the children of Israel, you have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me above all people and for all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel. In verse eight, they say in response, in self-confidence, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. Then God, their King says, get ready. I'm coming to you in a thick cloud. If you're here tonight, comfortable in your sin thinking I will do what is required, I am able. Behold what God says to you next in verse 11 and let them be ready for the third day for on the third day, the Lord will come down upon the Mount Sinai in the sight of all people. You shall set bounds for the people all around saying, take heed to yourselves that you do not go up to the mountain or touch its base. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. Not a hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or shot with an arrow. Whether man or beast, he shall not live. In verse 16, then it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunderings and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and the sound of the trumpet was very loud so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. Be warned all you able ones. Each step toward God on his heavenly mountain in your own righteousness is a step towards certain death. The tremendous and vindictive wrath of God do all the race of Adam will come down on you. Will you not approach God through his able and accepted mediator, Jesus Christ? Has God not authorized you, the one who is rebellious to believe by the very sending of his son? Turn and live. Moving along in context, after this, God speaks with Moses. Moses goes down to the people when he speaks to them the terms of the covenant in Exodus chapter 20 verses one and two.  God documents his name and what he's done for them. And in verse three through 17, he covers the stipulations of the covenant mixed with blessings and cursings, which are the 10 commandments. Tonight we're focusing on the 10th. Before we get to it specifically, there are some things to be said about the moral law of God first. It is perfect. It's spiritual. It's holy. It's just good and eternal. It's universal. It's written in your heart and it applies to you. It's different than the gospel. The law shows us what we ought to be, but not how to become holy. The law promises life for man's perfect obedience, but the gospel promises eternal life for Christ's perfect obedience. On the other hand, the moral law of God harmonizes with the gospel. Both law and gospel seek to lead you to Christ. The law indirectly in the gospel directly. The law exposes you and shows you your need to have your debt forgiven. The gospel reveals Christ's blood alone washes away transgressions by faith. Legally, the law is heard this way. Pay. Pay what you owe. He is worthy. And the gospel is heard this way. Paid. The sinless substitute has paid. He is worthy. Then henceforth, with newborn ears, the law is heard this way. Child of God, how else will you demonstrate your love but by faithful obedience? This is what he requires of you. He is worthy. And the gospel is heard saying, Child of God, how else will you maintain faith, hope and strength? This is why you love because he first loved you. This is why you're for him because you're in him. He is worthy. Remember this, the gospel liberates the believer from the condemnation of God's moral law and much more. But the gospel never liberates the believer from the authority of God's law. Those who are enemies of the gospel are also enemies of the law. Like the Pharisees who neglected the way to your things of the law like justice and mercy. And those who are friends of the gospel are friends of the law. Like David by the spirit writing, I love your commandments more than gold. Yes, then find gold. Psalm 119, 127. Now let's look closer at the 10th commandment. I'm going to read it again. You shall not covet your neighbor's house.  Each commandment is a representative part of a larger whole. Put another way, each commandment has a narrow meaning and a broad meaning. Like honor your parents is a narrow with reference to your legal parents or guardians. But the fifth commandment has a broader meaning which includes all authority, such as government, employer, spiritual leaders and God himself. So with the 10th, we're going to move from the narrow to the broad. Digging into this is very important brethren.  Paul said in Romans seven, for I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, you shall not covet. One of my primary desires tonight is that you know, like the man that uncovers dark things, what this sin is because it is often so subtle and always secludes itself in the heart. Though Judas had not the seed of God in him, we can say this as well. He never saw his slavery to covetousness. He served it all the way to the gates of hell. The main words in the commandment are covet and neighbors house and wife trying to keep it short. Before getting into the word covenant, I'm going to move to neighbors house and wife. Neighbors is a possessive adjective here modifying the nouns. It's not a house. It's your neighbor's house. It's not a wife. It's your neighbor's wife that's forbidden to desire. Your neighbor is anyone made in the image of God.  House could be understood mean to mean metaphorically your neighbor's household or their family. But I after studying the sin more throughout the Bible take it to mean all the material things that make up his house or were part of it from his dwelling place, his land, his to his bed to his clothes. Last, the word covet. The Hebrew word here in Exodus is transliterated C H A M A D. I don't know how to pronounce that. So I'll still say something though. So you have some kind of tag. Come on. Hopefully I'll learn Hebrew. Please bear with me. Commod is a verb. It means to desire desire greatly covet, take pleasure in delight in as a noun. It means desirableness, preciousness. The word often has a sense of pleasure or delight in usage. Here's something as a verb it is used in scripture for good desires and evil desires. For example, as a good desire, Psalm 68 16 uses this word to describe God's desire, which says, this is the mountain which God desires come out to dwell in. Regarding evil desires. However, Joshua 7 21, where Akin confessed and said that he saw the forbidden forbidden accursed things. He said, I coveted I come on them and took them. This illustrates an important point. There are good desires and there are evil desires. The word covet itself is not wicked. This is a good there is a good coveting and there's an evil coveting. We use the word covet in English so often in the negative sense that we automatically think it's evil when that word's in use. Here in the 10th commandment, obviously it's ungodly and evil. So the narrow meaning is you shall not desire what is rightfully your neighbors. This commandment is not directly addressing what a neighbor is selling as if to say you shall not have a desire for your neighbor's donkey that's for sale or his car for sale. Nor is the commandment forbidding good desires towards your neighbor's house such as humbly desiring your neighbor's house for shelter in a storm in an effort to preserve your family. What is forbidden reveals itself in the purposes and motives of the desire. Sometimes you'll hear it said God forbids in this commandment having desires for forbidden things and he forbids having inordinate desires for non forbidden things like a job or food. It's easy for most to know that they should not desire to have their neighbor's wife but it's not easy to know when a desire say for a nice suit or a dress is covetous or not or if a desire for a spouse is covetous or not. What makes a desire inordinate? Let's look at a couple passages to grasp what makes a desire inordinate and sinful before God. Let's turn to Luke chapter 12 verse 15 and he said to them take heed and beware of covetousness for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. Jesus warns the crowd against covetousness. What triggered the warning? Well, let's read verse 13. Then one from the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. This man comes running to Jesus later in his ministry after his name is very well known. He commands with an imperative or entreats Jesus to govern a family dispute over a family inheritance so that his brother will divide a portion to him. So let me ask you, is it wrong to desire a portion of your family's inheritance? It depends. Family inheritance is not forbidden like your neighbor's wife is but the desire's sinfulness depends on if it is evil or holy coveting. In this case, it is emphatically inordinate, immoral and evil. This is evil covetousness on display. This man was consumed with his inheritance in this life but was oblivious to his need for an inheritance in the next. Instead of seeking Jesus like Zacchaeus weighed down with a guilty conscience or instead of wanting Jesus to come to his family and friends so that they might discover the pearl of great price like Matthew, this man gave priority to an earthly desire and he wants to use Jesus to get it. Who was not appointed for that role? Oh, vile. How many defenses do you think this man could have made to flatter himself or to justify himself to others like the wicked in Psalm 36, 2? 1 Thessalonians shows chapter 2 that covetousness can be characteristically cloaked. He could have said, what's wrong with wanting a portion of my own family's inheritance? My desire is for what's fair. I'm a son just like my brother. How can you say I'm sinning? My soul, calm yourself. You know your motives were for justice. Colossians 3 5 says covetousness is idolatry. By the way, covetousness, being idolatry, that verse is a very helpful link to understanding this sin. If you want to study. Think with me about this man. He idolizes or worships this inheritance or he idolizes or worships an idea which the inheritance can achieve for him or and that this idea he fears he cannot have without the inheritance. Let's consider the truth. What makes this desire inordinate? It's inordinate and sinful because it prioritizes earthly ends over spiritual ends. Don't you see? When your desires value the world over God, over Christ and his will, your desires are not just nor the actions that stem from it. It doesn't matter how holy it may seem to you or men. Even if you desire to be perfectly conformed into the image of Christ, but for the ultimate purpose of selfish worldly ends, you sin against God, though it be covered with the thickest of cloaks. Brothers and sisters, you shall not covet. You shall not prioritize desires with earthly ends over spiritual ends. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 6 33. Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things that is your needs shall be added to you. Continuing in verse 16 through 21 and I'm not going to read it most I believe here familiar with it. Then he spoke a parable to them saying the ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. This is the parable of the rich man who had a abundance of produce and decided to store it in barns so that he could have his soul's ease. Three more aspects of inordinate sinful desire are revealed in this parable. Those three things are that the desire when you want to know when it's evil. It's when it stems from pride. It's when it self centered in purpose. And it attributes divine ability to earthly objects or ideas. Notice how clearly self centered the full is. This man is not a steward in his mind. He's a kink. My crops. If you look in 17 what shall I do since I have no room to store my crops. Look at 18 at the end. I will store all my crops and my goods. My crops my goods. He thinks instead God's crops. God's goods. His self centeredness becomes more clear in his purpose behind the bigger barns. He does it for his soul's ease. You can see that in nineteen. He says soul you have many goods laid up for many years.  He says I will say showing his purpose. What makes this man's desires inordinate and evil. It is that they stem from pride their self centered in purpose. He doesn't purpose the extra crops for helping his neighbor or the needy. Instead he purposes his crops for his soul's ease. He designed his desire for his soul's ease is evil because it is stemming from pride is self centered and it reckons the idea of having many years of goods to be protection for his soul. He makes it an idol. This is important. Quickly look with me at Habakkuk two four. Behold the proud his soul is not upright in him but the just shall live by his faith. In verse five you can see about part of the way down.  He gathers to himself all nations and heaps up for himself all peoples. You see how pride and desire are linked. Also notice that what's the opposite of the covetous proud man is faith. If you go down look at verse nine. Woe to him who covet evil gain for his house. Why does a man covet evil gain for his house? He has a purpose that he may set his nest on high. When a bird sets his nest on high all all all the other creatures all they can do just look at it. No one can touch it. The man who covet evil gain he says I want to be untouchable and then there's a purpose even behind that. If you look up it says right here next part that he may be delivered from the power of disaster. He's attributing evil gain. He's giving divine qualities to that gain in his mind saying that when evil comes to me like calamity in my life I'm going to be safe because I have my evil gain. I have so much gain it'll protect me. If we'll go back now let's go back to Luke. Brothers or if you know you're not in Christ your soul will never get rest from earthly possessions or earthly ideas. Let me list some things. Careers jobs paychecks huge bank accounts 401ks property insurance houses clothes technology praise of men the best of reputations closest friendships family ties your own righteousness your own wisdom your own willpower your own strength a healthy body none of these things your soul will never be satisfied. Why? Because beloved you are made for God.  Rest for the wicked soul can only be found in Christ. Whether you're born again or not this truth remains satisfaction can only be found in the bread of life. And oh what sweet overflowing satisfaction that is that there isn't him. This is why the covetous are never satisfied because they worship everything but God. They look for peace contentment satisfaction love joy in anything but God. They change the glory of God into an image of man's making they exchange the truth of God for the lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator. Therefore God gave them up to further covetousness to do those things not fitting.  Let's look at that if you look at verse what I want to read verse twenty one it's the end of the parable of the fool. So is he who lays up treasure for himself. You see how it's self centered and purpose. That's what makes that's one of those aspects that we said earlier that makes the desires wicked and is not rich toward God. It's the purposes aren't towards God but then look at this verse twenty two then he said to his disciples therefore what's the therefore therefore. It's a connection between what came earlier. What was he preaching about and teaching about before earlier covetousness and he goes into worry. If you were to go to Matthew chapter six where it says you cannot serve two masters either you will hate the one and love the other you cannot serve both God and money right after that he says therefore it goes into worry. Here he's pointing to his disciples. He's talking to the crowd tells them about the rich fool and then he says disciples and he goes into worry. Worry is another mask of covetousness. Worry if you study the passages on worry you'll see that worry comes from lack of faith. Let's look at verse twenty eight if if then God so close the grass which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven how much more will he clothe you oh you of little faith. Therefore evil covetousness doesn't trust God. Remember Habakkuk our desires are wicked and rebellious against the tenth commandment when they prioritize earthly ends over spiritual ends in other words they're not devoted to God when they stem from pride when they are self-centered in purpose and when they attribute divine ability to earthly objects or ideas they're ungodly and they are faithless much more can be said but let me just read this working broad definition. We started with the narrow here's the broad evil covetousness is a desire of any strength of any type of any length of time for any purpose object or idea which is without perfect and pure devotion to love for and trust in God. Therefore this commandment forbids any godless discontentment with your own God given estate and condition and it forbids any selfish self idolizing self-worshipping disposition towards your neighbor and all that is his.  Two do I believe the fulfillment of this desire will bring satisfaction fulfillment ease protection to my soul as if contentment cannot be had now in Christ three ask yourself is this desire under loving submission to the word of God remember Eve in the garden after entering into temptation she came to a point where she looked upon God's command hating him and with pride disobeyed God before she ate the fruit. Number four if the object or goal of my all my desires be stripped away if I can't have it and I knew I could never get it in this life am I content in and thankful for the pearl of great price and fully satisfied with him personally who is the bread of life. Here's an illustration I asked if I could have 40 um and I was given the permission uh once I was working for a power company in South Carolina and whenever you work for the power company eventually you'll come into a storm and there'll be outages people will be without power and I had the job of scouting out the problem was it a tree was it uh multiple trees um and you I had a computer and it would show me all the calls that people were making and their addresses and what they were calling about so you go and you find it out and you think you have it you you tell the people this is what the problem is is what the materials are needed here's the help that we need to get there well the storm had already been going the people are already doing their thing and you work for priorities you work to to put the most people on as fast as possible so if you're on the end of a circuit and you're just alone or you're going to be last well um I notice in the computer system whenever there's a consolidation of calls usually it's a it's a big deal that gets attention too squeaky wheel and uh I'm not seeing really any calls in this neighborhood but then later on in the storm things are going along I see all these calls I mean what are they coming about we know we got it over here we just hadn't got there yet and so we go over there and whenever you drive up and you have a Duke Energy truck people come out of their houses they don't have power and they've been calling they want to know what's going on I understand that and you know what they said they didn't have power it wasn't because some new tree fell it was because through their backyard on the other side street they could look through the backyard of their neighbor and they saw the power on at their neighbor's house because they were on a different circuit and they got theirs on and it triggered the calls everybody starts calling look he has power he has power the pride that exists in man when it enters into the soil of temptation outcomes covetousness why do they have power and I don't the desire self-centered it's not content in God nor does it lead to rejoicing with their neighbor and his good instead they sinfully covet their neighbor's power their sinful desire is prioritizing earthly ends over spiritual if they were seeking God's kingdom first they might take advantage of the lack of power and evangelize or help the needy they're not concerned with being rich toward God nor are they trusting God in the in the bible biblical imagery of the covetous the leech the barren womb hell death the fruitless seed choked out by the world and when i was reading this and i you think of jethro when he spoke to moses and he said appoint leaders that hate covetousness when you think of Jeremiah six and Jeremiah eight from prophet to priest every man's given to covetousness and they preach peace peace and when you look at second timothy three one through two i'm seeing this these things in the bible about leaders so we can we can broaden that and apply it to all leaders if you're a leader of any kind i wanted to share a quote with you you're a husband you're a mother you're a father you're a small group leader you're a disciple you're a pastor you're a deacon you're a leader at your work he said covetousness is the root of apostasy once leaders begin to be concerned about their security acceptability advancement well-being and possessions they will cease to stand firmly for the standards of the word stressing diplomacy over faithfulness peace and preference to purity diversity over god's narrow road so moving to the third point what's what's what does god require the tenth commandment also commands the opposite of what was just demonstrated all the commandments in the tenth commandments do this they necessarily imply their opposite so what does god require of this commandment what's well using the broad definition of what he forbids let me just put a broad definition to this and move on a continual streaming of all types and strengths of desires appropriate to each and every situation in life which is produced and governed by perfect and pure devotion to love for and trust in god therefore this commandment requires godly contentment abounding thanksgiving with your estate and condition and it requires a god-glorifying good-seeking disposition towards your neighbor and all that is his let me briefly mention here's some scriptures for you to look at heber's 13 five philippians 4 6 through 13 matthew 6 19 through 34 psalm 23 psalm 37 psalm 34 the biblical injury for what's required when somebody is obedient is like a weaned child how's a weaned child act when he's weaned no more whining nobody no more crying a fountain bread a satisfied stomach well the soul when it's satisfied is like that satisfied stomach that's the imagery of the opposite oh how excellent it is when this commandment is obeyed by the spirit when one denies himself and his evil desires and trusts god in christ and puts this commandment into practice how beautiful it is evangelical obedience in this area is excellent because god is worshipped in the heart because much grace is at work faith contentment humility godly priorities and because the soul is delivered from an abundance of temptations deramai's burm your my borough said in the rare drill of christian contentment the devil loves to fish in troubled waters think about cornerstone baptist church faithfully obeying this commandment more so than what you would say is faithful now think about how excellent that looks and how a much of a confirmation it is of the gospel in our covetous world i hope everyone here tonight can see this sin in your life this lack of obedience in your hearts i hope your conscience has spoken because you should be longing to put this into practice longing for the grace and strength to apply this commandment longing for a hatred of the sin i know of no better way to aid you than to exalt the lord jesus christ if we will turn with me to matthew four let me just say this beloved i'm not ashamed of the gospel of christ for it is the power of god the salvation for everyone who believes for in it the righteousness of god is revealed the righteousness of god is the perfect obedience of jesus christ to the whole law from the deepest depths of his heart who is the son of god regarding this commandment in your position before god remember the gospel if you trust in him and you the day death says to you i come like in the rich fool you can look it in the eye and say i'm ready christ has already come for me and his righteousness is all sufficient death let's not delay i come remember jesus was born under the law that he might redeem us who were under the law in his temptations one thing is for sure he is meriting heaven and that for his people in each temptation he's tested and put on trial will he love god with all his heart and fulfill his mission his pride and covetousness capable of him as fully man each temptation is multifaceted but i want you to see his marvelous breathtaking obedience to the father he is physically near death in this passage in matthew four the pangs of hunger gnaw at him well beyond the hunger of the israelites in moses's day he's weak he's exhausted and lays exposed to the devil 40 days ago his father said this is my beloved son and whom i'm well pleased he has just begun his anointed ministry he now and he knows full well he is the foreshadowed prophesied one of the scriptures and he is the only mediator between god and man but here he is in the wilderness with the beasts close to death the serpent of old cunningly approaches the devil being allowed has found an opportune time and calculatingly says if you are the son of god command that these stones become bread whatever else may be known to the lord at this time one thing is for sure it was clearly against his father's will for him to turn these stones into bread and the devil knew it i want you to see his contentment and see the righteousness of christ that is imputed to you today if you're in him and that will be declared in the kingdom of heaven on judgment day i want you to see his his fulfillment of the tenth commandment among other things but i want to see that he demonstrates as god the son and his fully man his immeasurable strength and love for god he's not like you he's not like me he's the god man he was not drawn away towards sin his greatest priority remains heavenly he values his father and his will over his own earthly needs he trusts the father to provide and his providence he is and remains humble not considering his equality with god something to be grasped at to feed himself or to humiliate humiliate the devil's insinuation that he is not the god not who he says he is he replies it is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of god he doesn't selfishly idolize his name against the father's will but he remains utterly resolved to reveal his father's glory by obedience despite all the conditions he remains perfectly content and with immeasurable love for the father and spirit he submits to the word of god the devil lit one of his most fiery arrows and shot but it was quenched in the infinite love in the infinite ocean of christ's love for god and therefore god's elect as our high priest there was nothing in him to catch fire leading to sin he is holy jesus never has had the slightest stirring of an evil desire in the most secret places of his heart even while on the cross he is the lord our righteousness therefore he could as son as holy be your substitute being offered to the eternal spirit therefore by faith in his work you can be assured you will be found righteous at the judgment with the tenth commandment since there's justification in christ how much should you able to have a clean conscience be doing the good work of obedience to this commandment how zealous should you be not to covet knowing how you were justified and given the gift of this spirit to obey jesus said without him you can do nothing and paul said i can do all things through christ who strengthens me and he he talks about that context about contentment therefore brethren i exhort you you shall not covet let me just give you five things on uh i'll just narrow it to three uh do the five all right five five things in application like when you get to it when you when you're thinking about it you're like how can i leave application out that's so important um this applies to those who are in christ acknowledge and confess your nakedness before god of your sinful desires be transparent with god though holy your god has known you all your life before the foundation of the world and yet he has brought you to himself in christ confess them confess your sins and faith and he is faithful and just to forgive your sins number two when sensible to your sinful lusts and desires meditate on and consider the greatness of the mercies that you have and the smallness of the object or idea of coveting that you're coveting ask yourself why should i be discontent and covet the things that a reprobate can have or may have why should i have what angels have and more and yet be discontent over this trifle number three do not grasp too much of the world do not take in more of the busyness of the world than god calls you to why should you go out of the way to go among thorns if god has not called you to do it number four be sure of your call to every business you go about if you're sure about your purpose to the to the least business or affair then whatever you meet your heart may be quieted with this and faith order yourself in each affair as you are able according to god's word when you when you know in what way god calls you to each affair you can in the spirit walk by the word and whatever may come god will take care of you if you subject yourself to god and all things then the truth is all things are under you and last mortify the fear of men with the fear of god so many are discontent and covetous not because they lack something not of themselves but because of what is highly esteemed among men your lack is so great would it be so would it be so if everyone on earth had less than you or if your current estate and condition were significantly more highly esteemed by your peers in the world mortify the fear of men the Pharisees were notorious notorious the covetous and lovers of money but they were even more notoriously man pleasers who love the praise of men more than the praise of god amen let's pray gracious father thank you for your word lord thank you for the patience of your people thank you lord for this opportunity to serve you please minister to us and bless the preaching of your word to our hearts as we leave here amen


Yeah, we on boss talk one-on-one. Yeah, we gonna talk and always and you know me I'll go right on back to structure you know far as When you I mean because of where we're at today in society is Far as gangs go and far as the way that the the culture is do we want to see change with the youth? Do we want to see children and everybody else detour those things and try to do things in a different way? Well, yeah, when you say do you want to see change and just like I Interjected to you earlier a lot of them start off Thinking about they want to do change and they want to you know You hear ex gang members always talking about we doing it for the kids not nigga. You're doing it for yourself You're trying to get be seen you change from what your intention was you get on front of camera You get to boast and about stuff that you really didn't do and you really wasn't a part of you didn't make up this And so now you're just like rappers just hearing stuff So when it ends up it don't be about the kids because it was about the kids If it was about the kids we wouldn't be in the situations. We are without a little Fragile egos. That's right. If we thought it was a bigger order It couldn't nothing that could be said to me if I had another intent, but they say before Destruction is the ego You know and so we start playing on who I am and what I did And you ain't done nothing Yeah, yeah, but the thing I look at is When I look at like I like I told you when it was in LA Well, I alluded to the fact of a lot of people a lot of kids in the culture in the south After they seen colors or whatever or me being in East Texas Shreveport was right there So you was influenced by a lot of those guys moving down there is what we this is how we ended up You know even knowing about games period, you know We was influenced by movies and stuff like that, but we never really that wasn't our thing not mine down here But at the end of the day a lot of times you see people portraying that now Is there anything that it should there be a deterrent now? You know far as after you see all the killing that go on is just something to where we should be saying hey, man This ain't the way we should be going with it For his games. Well, I guess we all say that you know, we all could say This shouldn't be the way it was But then again the portrayal is so Prolific that what you saying is one ear out the other. Okay, so I mean, it's a it's a hard job Lot couldn't get one So if you can get one you didn't done God's world, you know saying you didn't done the work, but To think you can save everybody can't nobody save everybody, you know So you have to keep on not talking to talk but walk the walk show it every day Being that I'm in I'm in my hood every day. Yeah, I'm in my park every day as a grown man I'm I'm not I told them are I'm not o.g. Marv today my mr. Kinsey. I Earned that you feel what I'm saying.  Well, you're wearing. Are you wearing it? You feel them saying so we have to get a concept Together as a unit who we trying to really say


They've been known to live for 75 or 100 years. These fish can reach upwards of 20, 30, 40 pounds in some very, very productive areas. Really impressive fish. And also fish we like to eat. They're like salmon, so they're very tasty, a little bit oily for some people's taste. So they've been commercially fished for a couple hundred years in the Great Lakes and they're sport fish almost everywhere in their range project. A lake trout disappeared from Lake Champlain around 1900. Maybe in part due to overfishing, other effects we don't know. The state of Vermont has been stocking lake trout since 1972 and all of the fish you see out in Lake Champlain right now are stocked fish. The goal is to restore a self-sustaining population. Why pay for something that could be naturally produced? So my research for the past 12 years basically is trying to find out why lake trout aren't self-sustaining. Given that we're stocking them, they're surviving well into adulthood. I think we might have enough room to set up the air. Really? I think you're bound on, yeah. It's a branch. There's something there. There's something on the left then. What is that fish doing? Just looking miserable. Huh.  Are these ones that are just hanging there? You know, are they the ones that are going, ooh. Now, do you need anything else from up here? That's a bad one either. About 10 years ago, we looked for spawning areas. We found a number of places where they're spawning. Then we looked to see whether they're spawning successfully there, they are. Then we looked to see whether those eggs that are deposited in November hatched successfully in April and the fry emerge out of the substrate. Yes, we're good there. Are the numbers high enough? Yes, we've got very high numbers. And now we're continuing to push that research forward to understand what happens to those fry as they progress through life. Because at the moment we see no sustained, successful survival of naturally-reproduced fry past about four weeks of age. All the fish in the lake are stocked. An ROV is a remotely-operated vehicle, or you could think of it as a remotely-operated video built for underwater use. So what this is is a little remote-controlled robot, if you will, that allows us to go underwater. And from our perspective, what we want to do is just do filming. The densities of lake Trout out there are astounding. It's sort of surreal after a while. And we have to wonder how much of is it an artificial density because they're attracted to the hatchery effluent? We don't know. They have an important ecological role as a predator. So in Lake Champlain, for example, there are really only about three, four top predators that will eat, smelt, and the rest of the forage base. It's the most important thing It's the major offshore, deep water, cold water predator. So they help the balance of the lake by consuming part of the forage base that is smelt. There's three things that could affect them. Disease, predation, starvation. Disease, we're fairly confident. There aren't any diseases we don't know about in the lake. There's no weird syndromes showing up that we don't know about. Starvation is a possibility. And the fry themselves, the newly hatched ones, are feeding very early, very successfully. So they're not starving, but it is possible that once they leave the reef, there's some imbalance in the food supply. We have to find them to know whether they're starving and at the moment we can't find them after they leave the reef. So it's difficult to study. Predation is another possibility. The community of the lake has changed a lot with the addition of exotic species. We've stocked things like brown trout and rainbow trout and we've got ale wife in the lake. We've got white perch in the lake. They could be competing for food. They could also be directly consuming lake trout fry. It's hard to find that sort of smoking gun. We have to find fry in the stomachs of those predators after they've left the reef. So we can look at them on the reef and there's lots of predation and they are being eaten by a lot of fish. Probably not enough to engulf every last fry, but we have to extend that outwards now off the reef and see who's eating them. At about four weeks old, they leave the spawning reef and they should be going off into deeper water. It gets very hard to follow them at that point. We never see them again and that's our obstacle right now, our black hole. Yeah, we might as well, because we've got a good 10 minutes we'll just get it down to that spot. Yep, yep. Yeah, I see, I say we do one more video dive. Nobody told him about bananas. Oh, if the footage doesn't come out, it's going to be your fault. You don't bring bananas on boats.


First, you know, and it was a great intro, I'll just share, I'm Liza, I lead U.S. investments at Axion Venture Lab, where we focus on fintech investments that are increasing not just access to financial services but affordability and well-designed financial products for low-income individuals and small businesses around the world, so focus on, in addition to the U.S., Latin America, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. After the past few years, we've been kind of continuing our thinking on gender and expanding our thinking on gender. Because we know that women in the work that we do continue to be disproportionately underserved by the financial system in emerging markets, they're 10% less likely to even have a bank account and operate roughly a fifth of small businesses but have a third of the credit gap, so really underserved, and that presents an opportunity. There's a almost $2 trillion credit gap that women, small business owners, in emerging markets face, and we see that as a big opportunity for the fintechs that we invest in. So with that, we'd love to introduce here Asya and Shariar to kick things off. Maybe starting with you, Shariar, could you just share a little bit about yourself and about your work at Trucker? Yeah, thank you for that. I'm Shariar. I'm the CEO and co-founder at Trucker. Trucker is a fintech based in Pakistan, and we focus on the transportation sector. We provide loans to truck drivers and truck owners, whether they're first-time truck owners or have been in the business for a while. This is a sector that has not been previously banked, so banks have not provided financing to the trucking industry there for various reasons. So truckers have had to resort to other sources of financing, which includes loan sharks and other sorts of maybe going to your family, and it's a pretty sizable industry there, but for the last 50 years, truckers have been sort of neglected. So we saw the opportunity there. Previously, I had a trucking company, so I've grown some trucks myself for a while. So we saw that opportunity, and it's actually pretty close to our hearts, so we're sort of solving that problem in the region. Amazing. And I think for most folks in this room of Pakistani fintech focused on truckers wouldn't be the first thing that came to mind when you thought about gender. Would love to just understand, I mean, seeing your commitment to this girl over the last year has been really incredible. Would love to just understand how you first started to think about gender and where you are now. Sure. So just like any other company, when we started hiring people, there's a lot of resumes would come in and we'd hire people, and I'd ask the HR people why aren't women interested in joining a trucker? So they said that women just don't like coming to logistics. As I said there, I don't accept this as sort of an explanation because logistics is a big sector in Pakistan. It's not just driving trucks. There's also, you know, there's sales, there's marketing, there's corporate sales, corporate departments that have supply chain departments, and all of these areas where women could make a contribution, and so they said, well, they just didn't have an answer to it. So I went searching and we actually found a region in Pakistan, which is in the third desert, which is like 400 miles from Karachi, and this region previously had nothing, but in the last 10 years, they've developed like coal mines and different power projects in that region, and in that region, there's indigenous female truck drivers. Like the entire region is covered by just female truck drivers, and I'm like, this is great. I mean, the whole Pakistan has zero truck drivers, and this like far away region in the desert has 100% female truck drivers. I said, we need to take this and sort of try and apply this to the rest of the country because if it can be done there, then it can be done sort of, and that's where we got really interested in that initiative, and then it sort of all came together because we, you know, we met Axion introduced us to Roots of Impact, Roots of Impact got interested in the mission, and then they connected us to Valley for Women, and so then we started working with USAID also on some initiatives, so the whole sort of thing came together very nicely, and now we're sort of working towards, you know, this initiative together. Perfect, and that's a fantastic segue, Asya, maybe just kick things off with a little bit about Value for Women and yourself when you work there. Sure, happy to. Can everyone hear me okay? Too loud. Okay. My name is Asya Troitansky, and I'm Associate Director for Inclusive Investment and Business Practice at Value for Women. Really pleased to be here and to Axion Venture Lab for dreaming up this event, and for helping to lead the charge in promoting gender inclusion in the FinTech sector, which is a cause that's near and dear to our hearts. So a bit about us, for those new to Value for Women, we are a global organization seeking to make gender inclusion everyone's business and in partnership with the private sector, and the idea is that we're working towards is, or the goal that we're working towards is driving improved opportunities for women, be they employees, leaders, decision makers, customers, clients all across the value chain, and we see a lot of potential in working with the private sector actors, particularly in the impact space, but not exclusively to do so. We have a global team that's locally embedded in emerging markets. I'm one of two that's based in the US, but we work in Africa, Latin America and Asia, and we work with our partners to come up with solutions that are context specific and relevant, and what we do with how we support trucker in Pakistan is going to look very, very different than how we support an impact fund that's investing in agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. So that's a bit about us, and I'm just really happy to be here having this conversation. Sure. And maybe it'd be great to get a bit more on how you think about this problem specifically and what opportunities you see for fintech companies to address gender inclusion. Definitely. And I think you already started talking about this, Liza, but we're here because the potential for fintechs to positively impact women is really staggering. In emerging markets, women are 32% of women are unbanked, which represents almost a billion women around the world. And even for those women who are being to have access to financial services, 73% are dissatisfied with the services that they're receiving.  So that's a really, really big problem. So why is this happening? Because most women are still, they think that the only solution that they see as sort of the way to get banked is through banks, and brick and mortar banks are really hard to access due to traditional and sometimes restrictive social norms, women have restrictions in mobility, right, and sort of how far they can travel. They also have what's called time poverty, right, the triple burden that they face in terms of home and work responsibilities, not to mention all of the document expectations in order to to register for formal account with with a bank, right. And so fintechs offer a really promising solution. And while they are not a panacea by by any means, they can help to overcome some of these constraints around mobility, time, just the complexity of accessing accounts through through through formal banks. And then maybe just one more thing to say, which is that for fintechs, right, there there's just a tremendous trillion dollar opportunity in in banking the more of the of the women's market, right. So fintechs then stand to gain in terms of the quantity of customers that they can bring on, but also the quality of customers. There is now ample evidence to show that women are good customers perform really, really well and are often loyal and take out multiple products with different financial institutions. So in financial terms, speak, you know, they have similar lower customer acquisition costs, they have higher lifetime value to banks. And so tremendous opportunity. Sorry. And one more thing, just to paint the picture, which is just like, if it's so obvious, right, like if fintechs are so obviously the solution, why aren't they already designing with women in mind? And there are there have been like 80 page reports written about this. But I'll just sort of point to a few factors, because it's important to think about these as we move into the solutions part of the conversation. So one is just having giant blind spots, right, and making assumptions that women and men in a given market will have the same financial needs, preferences, behavior, right, the one size fits all gender neutral approach, which we know does not work and does not respond to women's actual preferences. Another piece is having too few women in decision making power in in fintechs leadership and in the product design teams, which exacerbates that blind spot. And again, designing for all but really designing for for men and not for women. And then another piece is that when fintechs first launched, they have a lot of pressure to prove their models as quickly as possible. And they make the assumption which is actually not backed by evidence that men are going to be that men are more likely to be early adopters. And so they design for men. And then they fall into this self perpetuating cycle of continuing to design for men. And it takes a very conscious pause and reflection to to to apply gender lens and to begin to become more intentional about designing for women and for men in a given market. I just painted a bleak picture and I didn't mean to but I did want to I did want to sort of highlight that there are kind of big barriers and obstacles that we as a sector need to work to overcome. And there are promising solutions and ideas out there. And I'm excited to get into that as we move forward in the session. Yeah, it's incredible context and I've definitely seen a lot of examples of those challenges and also opportunities in our own portfolio. Shariar, for you, you're the founder of an early stage company. How do you think about prioritization? How do you think about kind of the right entry point? You know, once gender became a priority for you? And kind of what's what's next for you as you're thinking about gender? So so for us, it wasn't I mean, from day one, you know, we we had the mindset to, to hire, you know, men women both into the into the sector, right? So into our company. So so for us, it wasn't we didn't have to prioritize it was it was like, it was a given for us. We just we just faced a lot of resistance when we when we started doing it. And I think a lot of it starts with, you know, one of the things that we have decided is that we're going to make it attractive for women to enter the space. And that means starting at recruiting at at universities and colleges. So we start talking to we have a good network there. We start talking to universities and colleges to to place women into those jobs, right? Because they're not the the three, four sectors that women look at first is probably going to look at those sectors. So that's sort of what we're looking at in terms of where to start. One of the things that really stood out for me. I visited Bangladesh last year. And you know, I was visiting a senior government official there.  And you know, Bangladesh box over one country at one point, he said the reason is because and I said, I don't know, tell me. He's like, don't repeat this.  He's like, that's a real reason, you know, we just don't, we just don't like advertise it.  So but but it really stood out because it's, it's, I mean, in some levels, it's true, right? I mean, the participation in Pakistan is quite low. And there's so much talent, it's like talent sitting on the sidelines.  And like my own mother, for example, she's one of the few sort of broke the glass barrier in terms of women law enforcement in Pakistan. So, so that's, so she never took like no for an answer. She didn't care it was a male dominated space, you just went in and you know, now sort of it's very senior there in law enforcement. So, so it's, it's very possible. I mean, you just have to have the attitude that, you know, it can be done and just sort of work on good, good policies and good programs to sort of execute that. Yeah, and you started to allude to this earlier, but I think I just can't stand the suspense. So how many women truck drivers do we have? Sorry. So so we, we don't, we don't employ truck drivers. We're a marketplace that connects, you know, truckers with shippers. But in that desert region, there's about 250 female truck drivers. So our staff, so we have about 15% women in our staff. And we started at about 0% essentially. So, so we're trying to build that up to about 30 40% over the next year. That's our sort of target. And, and it's across. So it's not just in one area, for example, you know, if we were to just hire all females in our tech team, for example, right? That's, that's okay, you can do that. But we want it across the board. So we've actually hired women operations. We actually hired a female in in recoveries in the truck stand, which is like a job that even I wouldn't want to take. So so that's that's that's cool that the stuff like that is happening. For sure. Appreciate the question. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to interrupt it. It's not yet question time. But I'm very curious, when I think of trucking and transportation in women, I always think of safety issues. So, you know, truckers are on long roads by themselves, there are inherent safety issues and issues associated with Uber or, you know, taxi drivers, there's a reason why it's not common for women to take part of the role. Could you speak to what some of those issues are for? So, so there's, there's two kinds of safety. Do you mean like safety in terms of road accidents and stuff like that? What do you mean? Safety being being a woman, safety of physical, right, sexual violence in a more vulnerable position being out there. Yeah. Right. So, so there's the organizations that we are, that we're working with, they focus on, on these kinds of matters. There's a, there's an organization called CTLC that, that in particular, looks at sort of women's safety in, in the workplace. So working with them to build, to build systems where there's a response mechanism, there's a first response, for example, that they can, you know, before there weren't even, I mean, if something happened, you'd have to contact the police and that's not, you don't really want to do that. You want to sort of, people want to stay away from contacting the police in those kind of countries. So there, there are these organizations that are coming up and they, they liaison with, with private sector people to, to sort of make it comfortable for women to, to approach them and, and you can call them and sort of get help immediately. And so, so just working with them to sort of, you know, build that. So, so there are ways to, to make that environment better. And yes, that, that is a concern. Obviously, that is, that's one of the barriers that prevent women from wanting to join, you know, these kind of industries in Pakistan. Thanks. And last question on my end, before we move into some discussion groups, but I think this is a good segue.  We'd love for you to just speak quickly to the ecosystem and, and how some of that has kind of enabled this work or enabled you to, you know, make progress and, and kind of push this work forward. Yeah, I think I think this, I mean, without the support, it makes it a lot more difficult to, to, to do these things, right? I mean, we're already trying to build a new, new company that has its own challenges. So if you're taking on such a challenge, which is against the wind, I mean, I don't think it would, it would necessarily work out too well, to be honest. So the help is, is, is I think it's, it's invaluable. I don't think you'll be able to, to start. I mean, it's a starting spot, right? And then there's learnings that, that these organizations have had in different countries, which might be, you know, that can be applied to Pakistan. So I think that that helps a lot. So it's both just not just resources, but also the learnings that, that we, we get to see, I mean, designing a program with, with value for women, you know, they worked across the globe in different, different countries. So, so I think that sort of stuff really helps, right, in terms of getting this also done. Anything to add before we move into. I'd love to add, because I think what Sherry really touched on was the importance of bringing women into, into the workforce. And I'd like to offer just a few sort of guiding principles is too strong or a word, but maybe some, some practices that we've seen in gender inclusive product design, like vis-a-vis clients that sound okay, just to compliment. And I think it's best illustrated through another example, rather than sort of sitting up here and you know, walking you all through a complicated framework. So I'll just talk about one more, one other FinTech player, because I think even though we didn't work with them directly, there's a nice financial alliance for women case study about them that's publicly available. And they do a lot of things. They exemplify a lot of the principles of gender inclusive FinTech design. So this group is called time. And they are a digital banking group that's focused on financial inclusion for the underserved in South Africa. They started in 2019. And in just a few years, we're able to bring in almost 6 million clients, just over half of whom are women. Now the just over half is actually pretty remarkable because, unlike microfinance institutions, FinTechs disproportionately reach men rather than women. And so there are some reasons or some factors behind why they were able to bring in so much so many women. They didn't start as a women focused group from the get go, although they were focused on designing for their users who are underserved under both unbanked and underbanked in South Africa. And they quickly realized that women were particularly unbanked and underbanked as is true in many contexts around the world. And so they sought to design an easy to use product that women could easily access. So how did they do it? They tried to figure out, okay, where like where are the women like where do they where do they go every single day? Right. And so and one of those places where women go every day is the local grocery store convenience store to get foods non perishables for for for their home. And so they partnered with a large chain of these little local grocery stores and set up kiosks to onboard women to to to this digital financial product. And they made it very easy to register less than five minutes. And they didn't leave it to just this little kiosk, which might be intimidating, even though it's in a familiar place still might be intimidating, right? Like new technology. What is this? They they kind of brought in digital plus human touch. So they set up an ambassador program. They recruited local women from these different neighborhoods just to to women the kiosks, right? And and bring in new customers. And then the product itself, super easy to use, easy customer interface, clean, no jargon, no complicated language, no complicated financial terms and available in in how many 12 of South Africa's local languages. So super cool. Lots of intentional design. One other really cool two other cool things they did. One is they didn't just sit on their laurels, they continued to talk to women, they did focus groups, they did very intentional market research with their women users. And they were and they realized that women wanted other products, they wanted savings products, they wanted insurance product. And so they designed those specifically based on research that they were carrying out with women and the conversations they were having. And then the the other thing that they did was that first on an experimental basis, they started to offer these other product at very low fees. They didn't know if they were going to be profitable or not. And they studied the the performance, the repayment rates of their women users, and very quickly saw the the business case for serving women and realized that they could be profitable even offering these product at very low rates, because women were such strong performers in their portfolio. So just a lot of intentional design and several key principles that I think apply beyond this specific fintech. So one, the not assuming that one size fits all and just not assuming in general like not assuming right like collecting data and figuring out what are women's actual preferences and needs on a day to day basis, and using lots of types of data. So market research being one, right, focus groups, observation, and then using their own data, doing sex disaggregated analysis, forming the business case, understanding how are women actually using the product? What are their preferences? And then the digital and the human touch, the go to very intentional go to market strategy, pursuing partnerships with other institutions, right, in this case, the grocery chains for them to actually place their kiosks. And then lastly, the diverse leadership piece. So at this point, only two of the their 11 C suite members are women, but they recognize that this is an area of growth and improvement. And I think, you know, trucker also is really committed to this, I think there's recognition supported by evidence that having diversity in all of its forms in the leadership brings better, better quality in decision making and better services and solutions for diverse segments, including for for women. So those are some of the building blocks. And I'm sure you all have other ideas that we can get into. Absolutely. Now with that, I want to introduce three other incredible facilitators that we have here today from from different organizations. Actually, let you introduce yourselves, but maybe we'll start with Daniel. Hi, my name is Daniel Goldfarb. I'm founder and executive chairman of Lendable. We're an impact asset manager. We've deployed about $450 million to fintechs and emerging markets. We introduced internal DEI and 2x related criteria. Three and a half years ago, started that process, introduced a gender lens to our investment criteria about two years ago, are now launching our first gender fund. So I've been on this journey and really excited to learn with you. Hi, everyone. I'm Deanna Buncheva-Gooley and I'm a senior advisor focused on digital finance at USAID. For those of you who don't know USAID, this is a US agency for international development. So it's the largest international development agency in the world. USAID provides aid in disaster situations, also funds for economic development of countries, COVID vaccines the past few years. It only operates in emerging markets, obviously. And I am in the technology division and currently one of my biggest activities is I am managing what's called Women in the Digital Economy Fund. And that's a presidential initiative looking to close the gender digital divide in the digital economy globally. And there will be a lot of announcements coming out about that soon. It's a very exciting activity. Hi, I'm Laurie Spangler, founder and CEO of courageous capital advisors. I focus quite a bit on mobilizing capital, particularly with a gender dimension across investor typologies. So institutional investors, family offices, foundations and mobilizing it for the asset managers and the entrepreneurs that are going to use it to generate the impact. What I always remind investors is that with respect, they are enablers of impact. They don't actually generate impact. And so if they really want to put their money to work for impact, they need to understand the underlying business models and really think about how they can support, advance, accelerate, especially the achievement of our gender objectives and how they deploy their capital. To also add to Daniel's introduction as the gender commitment of Lendable, I am the first female board member of Lendable. Even better. Amazing. Are we back? Oh, OK. Is he nodding? Perfect. And before I introduce my colleague Eugenia, who's going to talk about logistics, I just want to bring two goals that I'm thinking about and we'll be thinking about in these conversations. And I'll invite you to think about also, we've been really intentionable, intentionable, we've been really intentional about bringing different layers of the ecosystem. So we have investors, debt providers, limited partners who are investing in the investors, DFI's, consulting founders themselves. And two goals I'm thinking about for this conversation are one, in our peer groups, what are the other really interesting things that are happening in gender inclusion? And what can I learn from the other people who are doing what I'm doing on a day to day basis? And then we'll mix things up and move into mixed groups where we can learn better how to better collaborate as an ecosystem. What are the opportunities to work together? What's not working in what we're doing now for other stakeholders in the ecosystem? And how can we start to kind of build those relationships and move things forward that way? So with that, I'll hand it over to you, Eugenia, who's going to talk about what will happen next. Thank you so much. And we are going to a fun part. If we were on Zoom, everyone would be dropping off because nobody likes break out rooms, but we're stuck here. So we're going to we're going to do a little bit of like engaging activities. So we're going to have three groups. Two facilitators will be leading each group. So we're going to have founders and operators at group A. And we would ask people to proceed there. And Asya and Sherry are will be leading the group with the founders and operators. Don't go anywhere, please. I'm joking. I'm joking. Then we're going to have direct investors in entrepreneurs and in startups led by Liza from VentureLab and Daniel from Landable. And then we're going to have a group of LPs, DFIs, nonprofits led by Lauren and Diana. I'm Eugenia, by the way, I'm a head of community at VentureLab. I work directly with Liza and lead in the community. So I also have cards. I'm going to distribute it for you and then everyone who has like red, green and blue to the second part of our workshop, you're going to come together and kind of see the ways we can collaborate, but it's later on. But I will give you a card right away. So am I forgetting something? I think that time we're going to have 20 minutes for each stage like we're going to discuss 20 minutes first, then we're going to present one or two sentences of each group. Like what did you learn? What was interesting? So we're not going to do like a boring debrief. But and then we're going to mix up and going to discuss once again. So we have 20 minutes for each group discussion. And I think we can start. So again, entrepreneurs and operators led by Asa and Sherry are just here on this table. And it's like a children garden. It's very fun. And then we have another group which is Group B with the investors in entrepreneurs on this stage with Liza and Daniel, please there. And then here we're going to have a group of LPs, non-profits and who else we have? DFI's, etc. So and if you have a question, which group you should go to, feel free to ask me. I hope you had a good time discussing in between the groups of your peers, investors, entrepreneurs. So now it's time to do a quick not debrief, but more like what did you learn? What was impressive for you? So we're going to share and we're going to start with a group of entrepreneurs and operators. It's literally five minutes because we want to do another round as well. Anyone from the entrepreneurs want to take the lead presenting? Asa. I'll share just two nuggets. One is we talked about the difference between having women customers, which is great, but that not being the same as actually making sure that the products that you're offering are high impact for women customers. So one of the people in our group is working with an organization that some of you might have heard of 60 decibels to actually validate the impact and improve the product. That was one. And then another we one of the people in our group talked about convincing a bank to better design for women. He operates in an advisory capacity and he said that the way that he was able to do it by looking at their data and showing there was a missed sort of like he was leaving money on the table like there was this big group of sort of women entrepreneur clients that that weren't being served with the with the product that they were offering. And they needed to go like a bit more upmarket and what they were sort of in the middle. They needed to design a product to better serve the missing middle. And they and looking at the showing them in their own data was very compelling. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I say and investors. Anyone wants to share from you. Everyone is so excited to share. Yeah. I'll just share one thing that that I learned. You know we talk a lot about product design for operators and for founders and startups. But I think heard two really cool examples of product design at the investor level one being lendable in their gender fund using an interest rate step down to incentivize different gender outcomes depending upon what the company is is struggling with when it comes to gender. So I thought that was a really cool example of how we as investors can be thinking about product design and what that looks like with our own capital sources. Thank you so much, Liza. And the biggest group anyone wants to wonderful. We were very participatory very as capital should be. So we really lost what can you do with being the investor? What can you do to accelerate gender priorities? And the two we're going to share. One is be clear about who you're backing and really think about that. And the second is the power dynamics. So jail. So I don't know if I've teed you've teed me up for the right talking point. No. You shared. Timeout storytelling. No. In understanding the who in your in your work, actually women. Oh, so I work within the native CDFI industry and native women are in leadership roles for 80 percent of the industry. And that's on a board level and that's on an executive level in our region of the country. Clients served, I believe, is about 56 percent women. And so the point is, is that women in leadership is normal and it's interesting to come into this space and to leave our communities and realize that we're not telling a really powerful story that is an example of I don't want to say systems change in action because I think it's actually it comes from honoring traditional cultures of the Northern Plains tribes and region and lifting that up. There. Thank you. And Susie. Thanks. Hi, everyone. I'm Susie and I work at the Criterion Institute and one of the things that criteria is always known for is being the power of people. And what would mean by that is that we think about finance not as a system of capital, but fine as a system of power. So we look at the way to change finance is to change the power dynamics that operate in finance. So we've been working on a system of standards around our system standards of practice around what does it mean to do investment, not necessarily only who you invest in, but the how of your day to day investment in your processes, in your structures, in your analysis and develop an entire system of standards and practices of analyzing the current power dynamics that are happening in a process structure analysis and proposing practices that shift those power dynamics and really working with asset owners who are understanding they have power and are willing to use that power to shift the power dynamics in finance to help those. So really looking at the how of doing investment, not just who you invest in. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. So now we go into the second part and we have 15 minutes to do so. So everyone who has a red card facilitators, first of all, you stay at your spots. So everyone who has a red card, could you please shift to this circle? And then everyone who has a green card over here and with the blue cards just if you can follow me outside, it's just in this area. And we're going to discuss how we can collaborate. Facilitators will facilitate and then we will be done because we're running out of time and it's been a great conversation.


Why do narcissists mistreat you? Why do they treat you badly, cruelly or unfairly? Why do they cause pain and suffering to you without feeling any concern about it? Why don't they behave according to the principles of equality and justice? Covert narcissists mistreat you because in their minds they believe that they are the victims. They believe that they are at risk of danger or harm. They believe that they have been tricked or duped. They feel helpless and unable to defend themselves. As though they are experiencing misfortune or ill treatment. They believe that the situation or environment is unfair. This is their justification or excuse to mistreat you. This is what makes them think that it is okay. Although they may seem forceful and aggressive. They really believe that they are defending themselves. They really believe that they are protecting themselves from danger or harm. Even if there seems to be no real perceivable threat to you. Covert narcissists feel vulnerable. They feel as though they are constantly exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed either physically or emotionally. They feel as though they are constantly experiencing some form of abuse or neglect. They need special care, support or protection because they feel like they are constantly at risk. They can take up a lot of your time. You may find that your entire life revolves around the Covert Narcissist. You may find that you are waiting on them hand and foot. Doing everything for them serving their every need. But nothing will ever be enough for them. They will never be satisfied. No matter how much you do for them. It will always be taken for granted. They will always demand that you do more and more for them. Until you have no time for yourself. Until your entire life revolves around them.  And they will still turn around and say you did nothing for them. They are ungrateful and unappreciative. But this has nothing to do with you. It's not that you didn't do enough for them. Nothing could ever be enough for them. Because they don't feel enough for themselves. They don't feel capable or secure enough on their own. Which is why they require constant physical and emotional support. But no matter what you do for them. They will always feel like you are against them. They will always feel like you should be doing more. They will never be grateful or appreciative for what you have done for them. Because they have a strong sense of entitlement. They believe that they are inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment. They believe that they are stuck in an unfair situation or environment. They are arrogant. They believe that they have superior importance or rights. To the point where they become overbearingly assuming. Insolently proud. Showing a rude and arrogant lack of respect towards you. Ill-mannered. Impudent. Not behaving well in social situations. Because they believe that they are superior to you. They believe that they are more important than you are. They feel entitled to special rights, advantages or immunities. But this is all just a cover up. For how they really feel about themselves. Deep down they feel weak and inferior. They feel as though they are not good enough for you. But they have to trick you into believing that you are beneath them. Just to keep you around. If you knew your true worth. You would be wondering what you are even doing around them. You would realize that you are the one who is experiencing a lack of fairness or justice. But they don't want you to realize that. Which is why any time that you do experience an act of injustice. They will ignore it or act as though you deserved it. They will make excuses or justifications for their behavior. Reasons for why they did what they did. They always have an excuse for how they treat you. But there is no excuse. Abuse is wrong. And nobody deserves to be treated that way. You deserve love and respect. You deserve to be valued and appreciated. And that is why the COVID narcissist has to keep you around. Because they recognize your value. They recognize that they need you. But they cannot give you the proper value and respect that you deserve. Because they would be allowing you to reside over them. They don't want you to reside over them. They want to have power over you. They want to be the ones that make decisions. They want to direct your behavior and the course of events. So they have to keep you in a state where you constantly doubt yourself. Doubting your worth. Making you believe that you are deserving of ill treatment. Never allowing you to recognize your true worth and power. Narcissists mistreat you. When they are not getting what they want. They believe that it makes them the victims. And as victims. They believe that they have the right to defend themselves. In any desire they choose to. Regardless of how it affects you. Regardless of the damage they cause. All that matters is them getting their way. Them getting what they want. Because they are self-absorbed and lack empathy. They do not have the mental capacity to consider you. Because they are constantly in survival mode. They constantly feel at risk of unfair treatment. They always want more. And they are never satisfied. The worst thing you can do in these situations. Is to cave in and comply with that every demand. You will be given their permission to treat you as their doormat. And as their personal punching bag. They will become used to using you. To meet their every need. And they will become used to using you for emotional support. But they will never value or respect you. Because in their minds. Anyone who hands over their treasure. Without expecting anything in return.  In their minds. That is someone who is not worthy of respect. They see your kindness as a weakness. And they will exploit it. They will try to milk as much out of you as they can. While making you believe that you do nothing. And using that as an excuse to mistreat you. And expect more from you. But it will never be enough. They will never be satisfied. They will always expect a higher standard from you. Because they expect more from you. Than they expect from themselves. Thank you for watching. I hope this video resonates with you. Please like, comment, share and subscribe. Click the bell icon to receive notifications for my future videos. If you would like to donate. My pay-up and link is in the video description. Couching and Crying is a good name for me. And I ask for your coaching at gmail.com. Thank you for watching. And I'll talk to you soon.


This video is sponsored by Squarespace. The next total solar eclipse is just nine months away. It's going to occur on April 8th, 2024. And I know from the last one in 2017 that it's never too early to start preparing. So this is the first video in a new series on the channel. Well, I'm going to be showing you everything you need to do to prepare for the 2024 eclipse and any other future total solar eclipses. There's a lot that we can actually learn and plan for well ahead of time. And actually, if you do leave it to the last minute, there's a lot that can go wrong. So in this first part today, I'm going to share some lessons I learned from the 2017 eclipse. I'm going to give an overview of what to expect with the 2024 eclipse in the US and Mexico and Canada in terms of its path and the weather forecasts and all that. And then I'll let you know what I think you should be doing right now, nine months ahead in terms of preparation. And at the end, I'll give you a preview of all the topics I plan to cover in future videos in this series leading up to April 8th, 2024. Hi, for anyone that's new to this channel, my name is Nico Carver and I cover astrophotography. And photographing a solar eclipse, a total solar eclipse, is a very specialized kind of astrophotography because these events are relatively rare and when they do come along, they're short. They're just a few minutes long. My first experience with one was the 2017 total solar eclipse that went across the United States from Oregon to South Carolina. And people are not exaggerating when they tell you this is one of the most breathtaking astronomical events you can witness. So if at all possible, I'd encourage you to see a total solar eclipse in person at some point in your life, make it a plan. And for us in North America, this one in April, on April 8th, 2024 is gonna be our best total solar eclipse opportunity for a very long time. And you might be wondering, so why should I trust you? What's so special about this kind of eclipse versus any of the other ones? Well, during totality for a few minutes, the moon completely covers up the sun from our vantage point on earth, meaning you're completely under the darkest part of the moon's shadow called the umbra. And this shadow is so extreme that it's very quickly gonna turn from broad daylight into twilight. It will actually get dark enough that you can observe some stars during the day. And then most important, it's the only time you can look at the sun, naked eye it, you can just stare at that sun because it's covered by the moon. And what is revealed is the sun's outer atmosphere called its corona. And the corona is constantly changing shape. So each total solar eclipse is a unique event because the solar corona is going to look different each time. Now, to see that though, and to actually be able to view the eclipse naked eye during totality, photograph the solar corona, all of that, you have to be inside the path of totality within the umbra. So if you're outside of it, you're gonna still see a partial eclipse, but you'll have to use solar filtration, solar filters or solar glasses the whole time. While if you're inside the path, you get all of those partial phases on both ends where we use the filters, but then in the middle we get totality. And the closer you are to the center line of the path of totality, the longer totality is going to last. And this 2024 eclipse, it's gonna be a bit over four and a half minutes at max eclipse. Well, with the 2017 event, it was just two and a half minutes. So this is a really good one. Okay, so what did I learn from photographing the 2017 solar eclipse? The biggest thing I learned is you cannot have enough backup plans when it comes to location. My primary location was like a solar party for this event in Missouri. And it was predicted to be a complete washout with thunderstorms predicted. And unfortunately, my backup location in Nebraska had the exact same forecast. I think it was a big storm. So I ended up pretty last minute finding some extended family in Nashville, Tennessee that I could drive to their yard the morning of, get set up very quickly with sort of a rush. And even Nashville was dicey because when it came to clouds, there was some scattered clouds. I hear that some people actually got clouded out who were in the Nashville area. I was very lucky because just minutes before totality, there was some big patchy clouds blocking the sun and you can actually see it in this screen capture from a 360 degree video I was recording. And then right as totality is starting, you can see it actually made for a pretty dramatic photo with all these clouds around. And there was a little gap where the eclipse was happening. But once totality really started, you can see the clouds did interfere with a clear photo of the corona. That was until the final 45 seconds of totality where the clouds finally passed along and I did get some clear shots of the corona which I was very happy about. And the whole thing was actually great. My favorite shot is actually this one of the diamond ring and second contact with the clouds all around. So even if you end up somewhere that's partially cloudy, you might still have a great eclipse day. The real worry is being completely clouded out, overcast sky or rain or anything like that. And my advice for avoiding that is having a vehicle and being prepared to move based on what you're seeing with local weather forecasts in the 48 hours leading up to the event. If you wanna set yourself up for having the best shot of clear skies in 2024, I'd recommend having your primary and backup locations being down in the southern part of the United States or even Mexico. I've booked a campsite in Texas right on the centerline to be my home base, my primary location. But I'm right now in the process of planning up four to five different spots that I could travel to within a few hours from there in every direction. So if I need to, I can chase the weather and chase those clear skies. Now, the reason I say your best shot is in the south is even though this eclipse is going to go through New Hampshire where I live right now, it's something like 90% cloudy historically on April 8th. While in Texas, it's more like 50% cloudy during April. And in Mexico, it actually drops even to under 50%. And this information, by the way, is coming from Jay Anderson's eclipseofile.com, which is a great resource. I'll link it in the description. Now, in terms of travel plans, you might be too late to book a hotel, at least at a reasonable rate along the path of the eclipse. You may get lucky and find something, but if you don't mind camping, there is still plenty of sites available at reasonable rates. And as far as finding camping sites, I got a tip from Brian Fulda, who goes by absorbing photons here on YouTube and on Instagram, that there's a website called hipcamp.com that has an interactive eclipse map that lets you see available campsites within the path of totality and book them really easily. Now, there are two more things I'd like to say about this, about booking locations. Number one, don't delay. If you're going to travel for the eclipse, spend some time today thinking about your plan and then go ahead and make a booking or reach out to a relative who is near the path because I think pretty soon most of the remaining good deals in terms of booking a campsite or an Airbnb or anything like that are going to be gone. And then number two, even if you have the money, I'm going to ask you not to make multiple reservations for lodging or camping. And believe me, I get the impulse, but it just means that you're keeping someone else from making a solid plan today by holding multiple spots. So even if you plan to cancel those later, I really ask you just to make one reservation. And what I'd suggest instead, instead of booking multiple places, is just book one lodging or campsite that's in a good location where you can travel to all of your backup locations the day of.  Okay, so that's the first thing you should be doing now is if you're going to travel for this, book your lodging or campsite or talk to family or friends who you can stay with, do that today. The second thing I want you to do right now is purchase a white light filter or filter making material for any telescopes or camera lenses or binoculars that you plan to use for imaging or viewing the eclipse. And the reason to do this now is my memory of the 2017 eclipse was the eclipse glasses were pretty easy to get up to about two weeks out. But filters, especially this astrosolar film became very difficult to find the closer we got to the event. I think it's sold out months in advance. So there are many good options for white light filters, but I recommend this astrosolar film because it's very affordable and it works for both solar observation and solar photography at high magnification. And again, so the point of this is we need these white light filters for the whole partial phase, but then when totality starts, we want to take off our filters very quickly. So it's very nice to have these custom filters that fit the optics exactly because then that makes them easy to take off and on. And in the next video in the series, I'll walk through making custom filters with this film. But in the meantime, what I suggest you do is buy enough film for all the telescopes and lenses and binoculars you plan to use for the eclipse. And if you have friends who also want to make filters, you can buy a bigger sheet or even a roll of this stuff and cut it up and it becomes even more economical that way. This is the smallest size I think they make, but it still would work for like a 120 millimeter refractor. Next time in this series, I'm gonna go over equipment for photographing the total solar eclipse and review different kinds of setups from simple to more complex and also cover field of view, what I think are the best focal length and sensor size combinations. And then like I said, I'll go over making custom filters with this film. In future episodes after that, I'll plan on covering fun experiments that you can do during totality, how to get involved with like citizen science projects, all that kind of stuff. I'll also cover automation software for controlling your camera and taking all the different pictures you want to take. I'll probably devote a video to each of the main options in terms of automation. And then of course, I'll cover the different kinds of images you can capture, how to come up with a capture plan for them depending on what kind of equipment you're using. And I might even do some videos on processing before the event so you can get some practice in ahead of time and feel like you know what you're doing once you actually have the pictures. If there's anything I'm forgetting, please let me know in the comments. I'll add it to my list. I of course hope that everyone watching is able to capture this beautiful event. But once you do, then what do you actually do with your finished photos? Well, something I definitely advocate for is to have your own website where you can present the photos exactly as you wish. And today's sponsor Squarespace makes that super easy. They have flexible website templates and there is a template for every use case and they're flexible in the sense that you can design them however you wish quite easily with their drag and drop engine. But the key thing is everything stays optimized for mobile and for desktop. And it's very easy to see what that's gonna look like as you're designing your website. I've also found Squarespace takes the hassle out of managing a website. For instance, the contact form is completely spam-free. I don't know how they do it but every time I try to design an anti-spam contact for myself, I still get tons of spam emails. But with Squarespace, it just works. I get the emails I need from actual customers and fans and no spam. And this is just one example of a ton of included features with Squarespace. Like you get all the commerce features if you need an online store, that's all built in. So if you're looking for a personal website or a professional portfolio or a site for your small business, I think you're gonna love Squarespace. You can get a free trial today at squarespace.com and when you're ready to launch use squarespace.com slash Nebula Photos for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Okay, that's it for this one. This has been Nico Carver at Nebula Photos. Clear skies.