i go around the world to speak
and people ask me questions about the challenges
some of my regrets
a single mother of four
three months after the birth of my fourth child
i went to do a job
as a research assistant
and they gave me lodging with a single mother
she was the laughing stock of the community
you and your child
the mother came to me knelt down
to be a nurse
i go to another village on the same assignment
and they asked me to live with the village chief
the women 's chief of the village
has this little girl fair color like me
her mother died while giving birth to her
for two weeks she became my companion
and bought her her first doll
the night before i left
two months later both of those villages fell
into another war
in the peak of our activism
the minister of gender liberia called me and said leymah i have a nine year old for you
i want you to bring her home because we don 't have safe homes the story of this little girl
she had been raped by her paternal grandfather
every day for six months
she came to me bloated
she 'd lie beside me and say auntie
i wish to be well
i wish to go to school
two thousand and ten
a young woman stands before president sirleaf
and gives her testimony
of how she and her siblings live together
their father and mother died during the war she 's nineteen her dream is to go to college to be able to support them she 's highly athletic one of the things that happens is that she applies for a scholarship
she goes to school on the first day the director of sports who 's responsible for getting her into the program asks her to come out of class
and for the next three years her fate will be having sex with him every day as a favor for getting her in school
the u n has the convention on the rights of the child
countries like america we 've heard things like no child left behind other countries come with different things there is a millennium development called three that focuses on girls
all of these great works by great people aimed at getting young people to where we want to get them globally i think has failed
in liberia for example
teen prostitution is at its peak
in one community we 're told you wake up in the morning and see used condoms like used chewing gum paper
girls as young as twelve being prostituted for less than a dollar a night
and then someone asked me just before my tedtalk a few days ago so where is the hope
several years ago a few friends of mine decided we needed to bridge the disconnect between our generation and the generation of young women it 's not enough to say you have two nobel laureates from the republic of liberia when your girls kids are totally out there and no hope or seemingly no hope
we created a space called the young girls transformative project
we go into rural communities
and all we do like has been done
when these girls sit
you unlock intelligence
you unlock passion
you unlock focus
one young woman i met teen mother of four
never thought about finishing high school graduated successfully
never thought about going to college enrolled in college
one day she said to me my wish is to finish college and be able to support my children she 's at a place where she can 't find money to go to school
she sells water sells soft drinks and sells recharge cards for cellphones and you would think she would take that money and put it back
into her education
and finds single mothers in her community to send back to school
i wish for a better life
i wish for food for my children i wish that sexual abuse and exploitation in schools would stop this is the dream of the african girl
several years ago there was one african girl
this girl had a son
who wished for a piece of doughnut
protested a brutal dictator
fearlessly spoke
the wish of peace came true
this young woman wished also to go to school
she went to school this young woman wished for other things to happen it happened for her
i 'm now on a journey
to fulfill the wish in my tiny capacity of little african girls the wish of being educated
we set up a foundation we 're giving full four year scholarships to girls from villages that we see with potential
i don 't have much to ask of you i 've also been to places in this u s
somewhere in texas a wish for a better life somewhere in new york a wish for a better life somewhere in new jersey
will you journey with me
to help that girl
be it an african girl
or an american girl
fulfill her wish fulfill her dream
all of these great innovators
in different parts of the world and all they 're asking us to do
is create that space to unlock the intelligence
unlock the passion
thank you so much
right now in liberia what do you see as the main issue that troubles you
as part of my work
i 'm doing these tours
in different villages and towns thirteen fifteen hours on dirt roads
and there is no community that i 've gone into
because you have all of these vices
so what troubles me
i want to look back twenty years from now
because of that nobel laureate
because i know it doesn 't take a lot
tell us one hopeful thing that you 've seen happening
we went there to work with these girls
and we could not find twenty five girls in high school
all of these girls went to the gold mine and they were predominantly prostitutes doing other things
we took fifty of those girls
and we worked with them and this was at the beginning of elections
this is one place where women were never even the older ones barely sat in the circle with the men
these little girls turned to him and said we will vote you out of office he 's out of office today
thank you thank you
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