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There's a group of people in Kenya,
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people cross oceans to go see them.
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These people are tall, they jump high, they wear red and they kill lions.
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You might be wondering, who are those people?
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These are the Maasais.
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And you know what's cool?
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I'm actually one of them. (Laughter)
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The Maasais, the boys are brought up to be warriors,
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the girls are brought up to be mothers.
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When I was five years old, I found out that I was engaged,
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to be married as soon as I reach puberty.
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My mother, my grandmother, my aunties,
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they constantly reminded me that, "Your husband just passed by."
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(Laughter) Cool, yeah?
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And everything I had to do from that moment
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was to prepare me to be a perfect woman at the age of 12.
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My day started at five in the morning,
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milking the cows, sweeping the house, cooking for my siblings,
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collecting water, fire wood.
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I did everything that I needed to do, to become a perfect wife
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I went to school not because the Maasai women all go to school.
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It's because my mother was denied an eduction
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and she constantly reminded me and my siblings that,
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she never wanted us to live the life she was living.
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Why did she say that?
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My father worked as a policemen in the city,
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he came home once a year, we didn't see him for sometimes even 2 years.
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And whenever he came home, it was a different case.
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My mother worked hard in the farm to grow crop so that we can eat,
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she read the cows and the goats so that she can care for us.
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But when my father came, he would sell the cows,
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he would sell the products we had
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and he went and drank with his friends in the bars.
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Becasue my mother a women, she was not allowed to own any property
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and by default everything in my family,
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anyway, belonged to my father so he had the right.
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And if my mother ever questioned him, he'd beat her, abused her
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and really, it was difficult.
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When I went to school, I had a dream, I wanted to become a teacher.
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Teachers looked nice, they wear nice dresses, high-heeled shoes --
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I found later that they were uncomfortable, but I admired it.
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(Laughter)
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But most of all, the teacher was just writing on the board --
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not hard work, that's what I thought,
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compared to what I was doing at the farm, so I wanted to become a teacher.
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I worked hard in school, but when I was an eight grader,
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it was a determining factor.
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In our tradition, there's a ceremony that girls have to undergo to become a woman.
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And it's a right of passage to womanhood.
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And then I was just finishing my eight grade
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and that was a transition for me to go to higschool,
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this was the crossroad.
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Once I go through this tradtion I was going to become a wife.
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Well, my dream of becoming a teacher will not come to pass.
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So I had to come up with a plan to figure these things out.
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I talked to my father, I did something that most girls have never done.
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I told my father, I will only go through this ceremony if you'l let me go back to school.
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The reason why, if I ran away, my father will have a stigma, people will be calling him,
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"The father of that girl who didn't go through the ceremony."
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It was a shameful thing for him to carry the rest of his life.
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So he figured out -- well, he said, "OK, you'll go to school after the ceremony."
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I did. The ceremony happenned, it's a whole week long of excitments.
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It's a ceremony, people are enjoying.
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And the day before the actual ceremony happens,
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we were dancing, having exceitments and through all the night, we did not sleep --
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The actual day came and we walked out of the house
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and we were dancing,
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as we danced and danced and we walked out of the courtyard
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and there were a bunch of people waiting, they were all in a circle.
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And as we dance and dance, and we approach this circle of women --
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men, women, children everybody was there.
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There was a women sitting in the middle of it
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and this women was waiting to hold us,
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and I was the first, there were my sisters and a couple of other girls.
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As I approach her, she looked at me and I sat down and I opened my legs.
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As I opened my leg, another women came, and this women was carrying a knife.
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And a she carried the knife she walked towards me, and she held my clitoris, and she cut it off.
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As you can imagine, I bled. I bled.
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After bleeding for a while, I fainted there after.
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It's something that so many girls -- I'm lucky I never died, but many die.
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It's practice with no anaesthesia, it's a rusty old knife
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and it was difficult.
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I was lucky because one -- also, my mom did something that most women don't do
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three days later, after everybody has left the home
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my mom went and brought a nurse.
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We were taken care of, three weeks later I was healed and I was back in high school.
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I was so determined to be a teacher now
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so that I can make a difference in my family.
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Well, while I was in high school, something happened,
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I met another young gentlemen from our village who had been to the university of Oregon.
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This man was wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, a camera,
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white sneakers -- and I'm talking about white sneakers.
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There's something about clothes I think and shoes. (Laughter)
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And this was in a village that didn't even have paved roads,
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it was quite attractive. (Laughter)
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I told him, "I want to go to where you are," because this man looked very happy
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and I admired that.
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And he told me,
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"Well, what do you mean you want to go, don't you have a husband waiting for you?"
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And I told him, "Don't worry about that part, just tell me how to get there."
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This gentlemen, he helped me.
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While I was in school also, my dad was sick, he got a stroke --
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and he was really sick so he really couldn't tell me what to do next.
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But the problem is my father is not the only father I have.
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Everybody who is my dad's age, male, in the community, is my father by default.
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My uncles, all of them, they dictate what my future is.
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So the news came, and I applied to school
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and I was accepted to Randolph-Macon Woman's College, In Lynchburg, Virginia
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and I couldn't come without the support of the village
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because I needed to raise money to buy the air ticket.
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I got a scholarship, but I needed to get myself here.
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But I needed the support of the village
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and here again, when the men, the people heard
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that a women had gotten an opportunity to go to school
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they said, "What a lost opportunity,
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this should have been given to a boy we can't do this."
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So I went back, and I had to go back to the tradition.
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There's a belief among our people that morning brings good news.
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So, I had I to come up with something to do with the morning
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because there's good news in the morning.
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And in the village also there's one chief or person, male, an elder
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if he says "Yes,"everybody will follow him.
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So I went to him, very early in the morning, as the sun had rised,
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the first thing that he sees when he opens his door is me.
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"My child, what are you doing here?"
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"Well Dad, I need help, can you support me to go to America?"
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I promised him that I'll be the best girl, I will come back
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anything they wanted after that, I will do it for them.
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He said, "Well, but I can't do it alone."
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He gave me a list of other 15 men that I went, 16 more men.
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Every single morning I went and visited them.
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They all came together -- the village, the women, the men.
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Everybody came together to support me to come, to get an education.
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I arrived in America, as you can imagine, what did I find?
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(Laughter) I found snow,
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I found Walmart,
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vacuum cleaners and lots of food in the cafeteria.
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I was in a land of plenty. I enjoyed myself,
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but during that moment while I was here, I discovered a lot of things
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I learned that, that ceremony that I went through when I was 13 years old
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was called female genital mutilation.
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I learned that it was against the law in Kenya,
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I learned that, I did not have to trade part of my body
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to get and eduction, I had a right!
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And as we speak right now, three million girls in Africa
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are at risk of undergoing through this mutilation.
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I learned that my mom had a right to own property,
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I learned that did not have to abused because she was a women.
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Those things made me angry.
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I wanted to do something.
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Every time I went back, I found that my neighbours' girls
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were getting married, they were getting mutilated.
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And after I graduated from here, I worked at the UN, I went back to school
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to get my graduate work, the constant cry of these girls was on my face.
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I had to do something.
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As I went back, I started talking to the men, to the village, and mothers and I said,
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"I wanna give back the way I had promised you that I would come back and help you.
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What do you need?"
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As I spoke to the women, they told me,
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"You know what we need? We really need a school for girls
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because there has not been any school for girls."
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And the reason they wanted the school for girls
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is because when a girl is raped when she's walking to school
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the mother is blamed for that.
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If she got pregnant before she got married,
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the mother is blamed for that and she's punished, she's beaten.
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They said, "We wanted to put our girls in a safe place."
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As we moved, and I went to talk to the fathers,
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he fathers of course, you can imagine what they said,
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"We want a school for boys."
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And I said, well, there are a couple of many men from my village who had been out
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and they've got an education
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why can't they build a school for boys and I'll build a school for girls?
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That made sens and they agreed.
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And I told them, I wanted them to show me a sign of commitment
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and they did.
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They donated land where we build the girls' school, we have.
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I want you to meet one of the girls in that school.
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Angelene came to apply for the school
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and she did not meet any criterias that we had.
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She's an orphan, yes. We could have taken her for that,
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but she was 12 years old and we were taking in girls who were in the fourth grade.
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Everybody were telling us Angelene had been moving from one place,
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because she's an orphan, she has no mother, she has no father,
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moving from one grandmother's house to another one
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from aunties to aunties, she had no stability in her life.
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And people said, and I looked at her I rememberd that day,
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and I saw something beyond what I was seeing in Angelene
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and yes she was older to be in fourth grade,
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we gave her the opportunity to come the class.
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Five months later, there is Angelene.
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A transformation had begun in her life
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Angelene wants to be a pilot so she can fly around the world and do a difference.
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She was not the top student when we took her,
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now she's the best student not just in our school,
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but in the entire division that we are in.
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She's showing different, that's Sharon, that's five years later,
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that's Avaleen, five months later, that's the difference that we are making
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As a new dawn is happening in my school
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A new beginning is happening,
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as we speak right now 125 girls will never be mutilated.
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125 girls will not be married when they are 12 years old.
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125 girls are creating and achieving their dreams.
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This is the thing that we are doing - giving them opportunities so they can rise.
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As we speak right now, women are not being beaten
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because of the revolutions we've started in our community.
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(Applause)
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I want to challenge you today
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you're listening to me because you are here very optimistic.
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You are somebody who is so passionate
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You are somebody who wants to see a better world.
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You are somebody who wants to see the war end.
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No poverty.
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You are somebody who wants to make a difference.
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You are somebody who wants to make our tomorrow better.
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I want to challenge today to be there first --
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because people will follow you.
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Be the first - people will follow you
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Be bold - standup.
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Be fearless.
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Be confident.
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Move out because as you change your world, as you change your community,
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as we believe we are impacting one girl, one family,
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one village, one country at a time.
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We are making a difference.
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So if you change your world, you're going to change your community,
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you're going to change your country.
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And think about that, if you do that and I do that,
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ain't we going to create a better future,
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for our children, for your children, for our grandchildren,
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and we will live in a very peaceful world.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)