Words matter. These are the best Ann Cotton Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
You need to listen to the people experiencing the problems, and their ideas need to crowd out the words of the ‘can’t be done-ers.’
For more than 20 years, Camfed has supported a generation of African girls and women with access to secondary and higher education, employment opportunities, and, ultimately, into positions of leadership.
Poverty is more than a material experience; it’s a psychological state as well, one that is infused with anxiety. And decision-making is very complex because every decision you make has an impact on your future and survival.
Camfed graduates are active in their villages using their skills and resources to improve as many lives as possible. They are teaching financial literacy to marginalized women and bringing vital health care information to rural schoolchildren. Through example, they are demonstrating the power of philanthropy.
Be greedy for social change, and your life will be endlessly enriched. The only failure lies in not trying, or giving up.
Camfed has worked for more than two decades in partnership with poor families, transforming this desire for girls’ education into reality, and showing the measurable benefits of girls’ education for all of us.
In the family pattern, men support boys and women support girls, and because women have far fewer financial resources, there is less money to invest in girls.
Women’s vulnerability around money is hardly exclusive to Africa. Throughout the world, women struggle with financial power. In the West, women’s financial literacy is notably lower than men’s. That lack of knowledge means that many women slide into poverty when they become widows.
If you can’t send your daughter to school when you know it will help her, you feel a sense of failure, and you feel that failure deeply.
The exclusion of girls from education is an issue of justice. But it’s also an issue of economics because it’s holding families, communities, and nations back. The chiefs are often a bridge between the traditional and the modern world and are very powerful implements to change.
All children everywhere deserve the opportunity that is unlocked for them by education.
At Camfed, we have focused on transforming the vicious cycle of poverty in many rural African communities into a cycle of opportunity. Alumnae of Camfed’s programs go on to become role models and mentors for future generations of young students. We call this the ‘virtuous circle,’ and we know this is a model that works.
Poverty diminishes confidence. So if someone offers you a grain store, even if you really need a plough, you take what is offered to you.
You can’t raise the aspirations of a child and then leave them hanging. Poverty can’t be solved by a project. It’s solved by a relationship, collaboration.
Girls’ education is a human right. And along with its fundamental justice, it promises so much for the individual, for her family, for society, for all of us.
Never take your eye off the ball. Always remember that you and everyone on the team is the servant of the cause – in our case, girls’ education and young women’s leadership in Africa.
For the poor, learning to manage money well is central to improving their lives.
Money is hardly neutral. Its connection to power makes it a highly charged social phenomenon and a mediator of relationships. Because it has historically been controlled by men, it has given men a tool for controlling women.
The work being done by Linklaters to help organizations understand keys to success in the development sector serves as an important international affairs issue and crucial element in how all of us work to support service provision in impoverished communities in a lasting and effective way.
I am honoured to join education innovators like Ms. Vicky Colbert, Dr. Madhav Chavan, and Sir Fazle Hasan Abed as the fourth WISE Prize for Education Laureate. I accept this prize on behalf of the million girls Camfed is committed to supporting through secondary education.
