Transcriber: Helena Bowen Reviewer: Denise RQ
Hi everyone.
So nearly five years ago,
I moved into Kibera, the largest slum in Africa
while I was studying abroad in Nairobi,
a long way to go for a girl from Denver, Colorado.
I did not spend my time in Nairobi making out with giraffes.
(Laughter)
Soon after I arrived in Nairobi, I found myself in Kibera.
I was introduced to a young social activist named Kennedy Odede
who was born and raised in Kibera, working to make change from within.
If everyone could just imagine this with me for a moment,
Kibera is an area about the size of Central Park,
but in this area there are over 1.5 million people
living without access to services of any kind.
No roads, no health clinics, no sewage systems, no access to education.
In Kibera, life is bleak.
66% of girls will be forced to trade their bodies for food simply to survive
by the time they are 16.
One out of five children won't live to see their fifth birthday.
Life expectancy is 30 years of age, compared to 60 in the rest of Nairobi.
But here I met Kennedy.
Kennedy was the oldest of eight children, born and raised in Kibera.
His mother had him when she was 15 years old.
Kennedy had a job in a factory, earning a dollar a day,
which made him lucky, but one day he was able to save 20 cents
and start a movement within the slum by buying a soccer ball
and bringing young people together to talk about these issues,
to perform theater in the streets, to talk about gender violence.
Kennedy was especially committed to the struggle of women and girls
because he saw his mother
as she endeavored to put food on his family's table.
In Kibera, seven out of ten women will experience violence,
and contract HIV at a rate 10 times higher than their male counterparts.
Devastating statistics.
Kennedy had a dream.
He wanted to change his community,
but he knew he couldn't do it without an education.
So I told him, as I was a junior at Wesleyan, that he should apply.
And he said, "Well, what are they going to say?
I have no formal education. How will I get in?"
But Wesleyan said yes and gave Kennedy a full scholarship.
He graduated last weekend as the class speaker with honors--
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
And as he said in his speech,
it doesn't matter where you come from, what matters is where you want to go.
So while at Wesleyan, Kennedy and I had an idea.
We know that when you invest in women and girls,
communities like Kibera change.
Women invest 90% of their earnings in their families, paying for education,
for healthcare, changing economies, making places like Kibera transform.
So we started the first free school for girls in Kibera.
These are our amazing students.
Our school started three years ago with the vision to serve
the most marginalized and at risk girls in the slum
providing them with a superior education,
that would not only protect them from rape and abuse,
but would also provide a pathway out of the slum,
creating the next generation of leaders.
Our school is incredibly hands on.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Our school serves girls like Diana.
Diana's father lost his ability to walk when he was a child
because his family could not afford to take him to a health clinic
when he had an infection in his leg.
Now Diana is thriving.
Our students go to a school that is incredibly creative.
We have theater classes, we have yoga
(Laughter)
and we have girls in preschool who are setting gender goals for their community.
Goals like "I want every girl to go to school."
"I want everyone to know" - my personal favorite -
"that girls are smarter than boys."
(Laughter)
I remember meeting a group of our second grade students
on the street a few weeks ago,
after they had interviewed a business owner in the community,
and I asked, "What were the questions you asked?
and one of our second graders raised her hand and said,
"Well, I asked him where he got his startup capital,"
and I thought, wow, I didn't learn that word until a few years ago.
I can't believe that I heard that from a second grader.
But it's bigger than that.
We thought, what if we could not only have a school for girls
but change the way
the community as a whole view girls and girls' education?
How might that fundamentally change a community like Kibera?
So we decided, what if we could identify the highest value services
and build them in connection to a school for girls,
opening them to the entire community?
We started to think about what does everyone want and need
and how to build an incentive structure that values women and girls,
and shows the entire community
that benefiting women actually benefits everyone?
We started classes for our parents and savings and loan programs,
helping people to start businesses
and earn more money to feed and educate their families.
We started a community health clinic,
focused on providing high quality primary and child health care,
as well as women's health services and a focus on HIV prevention and treatment.
We also started a peer educator program,
empowering young people to talk to each other
about the problems in their community.
We started community centers that offer services
targeting every demographic in the community.
One of our most powerful is a committee of community members
committed to ending gender-based violence.
This program was started by a father at our school
after his 4 year old daughter was raped.
Her perpetrator was arrested, but three dollars was enough
for the police to wipe his name from the records completely.
He worked with us and we fought for two months to get this man arrested.
He was eventually apprehended
and just sentenced to life in prison a few weeks ago.
(Applause) Thank you.
After that her father said, "What about everyone else?
People who don't have advocates, support systems built in?
What do they do?"
So we built a community team from all over the slum
who are talking about gender violence and who are first responders,
prepared to connect victims to legal, psychological, and medical support.
And this year, we've already worked on over 40 cases successfully,
really creating a culture that values women and girls.
We also have a cybercafe in the middle of the slum with high-speed internet,
providing people access to computer skills,
which are necessary to compete in today's economy.
We have a group for women living with HIV that teaches them skills
and enables them to earn a living
and make products that are sold all around the world.
We have community members coming together to clean up their community,
taking action on their own.
We have soccer teams for young people
to keep them busy and connected to a bigger goal.
We just built the slum's largest clean water tower
that will provide over 10,000 people a day with access to safe drinking water.
(Applause)
We built toilets all throughout the slum that literally say on the side of them,
"Donated by the Kibera School for Girls,"
making everyone invested in this community dedicated to girls' education.
This year all of our services will serve over 30,000 people in Kibera,
and we're just getting started.
What inspires me most is when I hear stories of our girls.
A few weeks ago in social studies,
they were looking at the problems in their community,
and every class had to propose a possible solution
to one of the challenges that they saw.
Our preschoolers said that we should start a school for adults
because their parents can't read and write.
So we're planning to launch adult education classes next month,
and we're just getting started.
Kennedy and I are actually getting married here in Denver next week.
(Applause)
A week from today. Thank you.
(Applause)
And we have big dreams about what is possible,
not only for this community but for communities like it around the world.
Across the developing world,
78% of people living in cities live in slums.
This is simply not acceptable, and it affects all of us.
Here in Denver, Colorado, it matters what happens in Nairobi,
what happens in Mumbai, what happens to girls like Diana,
girls like Michelle, and parents at our school.
So we're asking you to join our movement.
Log onto our website and become involved in what you can do to help
because it takes all of us.
Thank you so much.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)