During this MOOC, we have shown many ways in which finance can be used for the better. Finance really can be a means to achieve real world goals rather than just a way to make money. But we're not there yet and it's not going to happen automatically. It starts with the realization that finance is not a machine, a machine that runs independently. No, finance is run by people, people who make decisions, who design structures, and we have to take the real worlds into account when doing so, and you can play a part there as well. If you don't believe me, just look at prominent activists like Greta Thunberg and Mark van Baal. They both have little means and yet a very large impact. Mark van Baal got climate change on the agenda of Royal Dutch Shell. He did so by buying a few shares and making speeches at Shell's shareholder meeting. That's all, he did. Greta Thunberg's success was even more spectacular and unexpected. As a high school student in Sweden, she decided to go on a climate strike, and she got the whole world as her audience. Of course, it doesn't need to be as dramatic as that, but you can do something meaningful as well. By nature, you have several roles. There's you as a citizen, you as a consumer, you as an employee, you as a voter, etc, and you can be very different in those roles. Just like the Jekyll and Hyde characters in the Sherlock Holmes novel, you might be good as a citizen and bad as a consumer. For example, as a citizen, you might be in favor of policies that protect the environment and the weak. While as a consumer, you keep polluting the planet by buying things that directly or indirectly burn fossil fuels and destroy biodiversity. Let's briefly look at some of these roles. First, you as a citizen, second, you as a consumer, and third, you as an employee. First, as you as a citizen, and it's very simple roles such as you as a voter. As a voter, you can choose political parties and politicians who set a high priority in sustainability. Who are truly in favor of serious [inaudible] , transparent supply chains, stimulating public transport, circularity, etc. As a citizen, you are also someone with a physical presence who may choose to live responsibly and as a parent, a friend, and a neighbor, you also influence others by means of your behavior and recommendations. You can even become an activist. The second big role is you as consumer, i.e., you as a buyer of goods and services. You may or may not decide to pay more for better or more sustainable products, provided that you know or believe that they are really more sustainable. To find that out, you can track their supply chain, and this applies not only to physical products but to services as well. Just think of financial services such as banking, investments, pension products. In the end, they all relate to physical products as well, in which they are investors. As a consumer, you can make many more demands than you might think on quality, on transparency, on footprint, on the treatment of people in the value chain, etc. You can do all of that passively by simply not buying the products, but also more actively, by communicating about it. Up to reforming and mobilizing consumer interest groups. Your third role is as an employee, student, or self-employed professional. You can make choices on your job. First of all, most of you can choose if you want to be in your current job or not, and in that job, even at the lowest part of an organizational hierarchy, you might find ways to change things for the better. If you're a manager, you have even more opportunity and also more responsibility to do good. If you have goals that are best relies outside existing organizations, you can start your own business. In sum, there's much more that you can do than you think. So what are you going to do?
