Translator: Leanne Payne Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
Meet Fahteme.
Fahteme lives in Chad near the border with Sudan.
She lives in a UNHCR sponsored refugee camp.
This is her with her daughter.
It's about 35 kilometers from the border with Sudan
which she left in 2004 due to war.
She lives in a camp called Iridimi.
This camp is one of about 10 in the region,
and it has about 25,000 people.
Fahteme is the chair of the women's council in this camp.
I met her in 2012
when I was working with the UNHCR
to look at solar options for refugee camps.
I asked her,
"What is the biggest challenge facing women and girls in the camp?"
And she said to me, "Firewood."
"Firewood?"
"Yeah, firewood."
OK ...
She said the women and girls go out to collect the firewood
because they have to cook the meals.
And at first it was OK:
they would go outside of the camp and collect some wood.
But the wood became more scarce,
so they would have to walk further and further afield.
They would walk 10 kilometers, and then, eventually, 15 and 20.
Now they're walking up to 35, 40 kilometers
back into Sudan to collect firewood.
The problem is: they have no protection.
And she said, "And then we have the troubles."
I said, "Troubles?"
She then turned to her interpreter and said something in Arabic.
and the interpreter said,
"Steve, troubles mean rape."
Then she said something else to the interpreter.
The interpreter said,
"Steve, Fahteme has had troubles."
What? It's 2014,
and women and girls are forced to go and collect firewood
to cook their meals in a UNHCR sponsored refugee camp
and are repeatedly being raped?
Can we do better?
I think so, I think so.
My name is Steve Huff,
and I do work with a foundation called The Light Foundation.
And one of the things that we focus on is energy poverty.
So, what is energy poverty?
It quite simply is the lack of access to clean, renewable energy.
Energy poverty primarily affects
healthcare, education, and economic development.
Women and girls are affected most of all.
Now, there are groups out there,
even some great Silicon Valley companies,
that are working on cookstove solutions.
Great innovative technologies,
and I love innovation,
I'm an innovation junkie, I love it.
But innovation with a lack of understanding
of what the core issues are, and the problems are, is useless.
So what are the other core issues that Fahteme faces
when she cooks her meals?
It's not just that she has to go and collect firewood
and put herself in danger.
It's that the actual fuels that she's using are killing her.
Because what happens in the developing world
is we're cooking with wood or charcoal, or, worst of all, kerosene.
We're cooking in confined spaces,
and so we're creating this toxic environment.
It's like a soup where we're breathing in these fumes.
Here's Fahteme's kitchen.
You can see the ceiling and all the soot on the ceiling of her kitchen.
So, what happens is women are breathing in these fumes.
The World Health Organization said
that women who cook with kerosene
have the same lung capacity as a two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker.
And worse still, kerosene, which is the leading cause of indoor pollution,
kills more people annually in the developing world
than HIV and AIDS combined.
Can we do better?
Yes, we can.
Think about healthcare for a moment.
Think about 400,000 medical clinics in Africa
who don't have access to light or power.
Here's my celebrity photo art.
This is with celebrity chef Matt Golinski.
Matt and I were in Malawi about eight weeks ago,
and we were installing solar in schools and medical clinics.
One of the other things we did in the medical clinics,
we were able to provide some lighting to some midwives.
And this midwife, although she doesn't really look it,
she was excited.
(Laughter)
She was excited
because she was going to have a solar light to deliver babies by.
She delivers one to two babies a night,
and she said, "Ah, I don't have to use candles anymore."
Can we do better?
(Audience) Yes
Yes.
What about education?
Think about your own school.
What if it didn't have light or electricity?
What if you couldn't do homework at night
or your children couldn't do homework in their home?
This is James, an orphan living in Malawi.
His parents died of HIV/AIDS.
This is the first time, this photo represents the first time,
he has ever done homework at night,
and he's 16 years old.
Can we do better?
I think so.
Lighting in schools in not difficult.
Education provides a tremendous opportunity,
particularly for women and girls.
"Bring out your dead!"
How many of you remember that movie?
The search for the Holy Grail, Monty Python.
Great movie, and I love this scene.
It's a macabre scene, it's the Black Death, the plague,
and a guy is pushing a cart through the middle of the village
and shouting, "Bring out your dead!"
People are coming and throwing bodies on the cart -
it's really gross.
And this one guy gets up and says, "I'm not dead yet."
And someone says, "He will be, soon."
And he says, "Um, I'm not dead yet, I'm feeling much better, actually.
I think I'll take a walk."
And he walks away.
I'm not dead yet. Say it.
(Audience) I'm not dead yet.
It's like a little holy mantra, a little prayer you can say,
every time you get up in the morning.
You can say it going through your day interacting with your friends.
I'm not dead yet. Say it.
(Audience) I'm not dead yet.
Now say it to the injustices of the world,
to women and children who are abused and neglected,
to broken relationships.
Say it.
I'm not dead yet.
Now say it to people
who have to spend 40% of their monthly income
on fuel sources that are killing them,
to children who can't do their homework at night because they can't see,
or who, worse yet, fall into fires or are burnt by kerosene.
Say it: I'm not dead yet.
Now say it to women who have to cook
and their only fuel source is giving them lung cancer and killing them,
or they think to themselves,
"Oh, my God, am I going to get raped again when I go get firewood?"
Say it: I'm not dead yet.
And because you're not dead, life is not through with you.
Because you're not dead yet,
hope is still possible for you and the world.
Light is still possible for you and the world.
It's a wild, wacky world out there, folks.
I've been to some dark places, literally and figuratively,
and I know that some of you have been in the darkness as well.
But of all the power of the darkness in this world,
light is more powerful.
And it will win every time,
if you believe, like I do, because we're here,
that you're not dead yet,
and if you believe
that the answer to the question of "Can we do better?" is "Yes."
Thank you and be well.
(Applause)