Acceptance Speeches

Pamela Passman, Vice President,
Global Corporate Affairs, Microsoft

Thank you for that kind introduction, Lesley. And congratulations to today’s other honorees being recognized today for their contributions to accessible education and welfare of women and children - Christiana Thorpe, Aziza Ishaqzai, and the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies.

It is my privilege to accept this Voices of Courage award on behalf of the Microsoft Corporation, and the more than 60,000 Microsoft employees in nearly 100 countries whose vision, hard work and commitment are being recognized and honored here today.

The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children w orks tirelessly to improve the lives, and defend the rights, of refugee and internally displaced women and children worldwide—and inspires others to join that vital effort. We applaud the Commission for all of its good work.

At Microsoft, our mission is to enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential. As part of our mission, Microsoft is committed to a comprehensive, long-term effort to provide technology access, education, and skills training that can empower and create new opportunities for millions of people.

Since 2003, we have consolidated much of our work in IT skills education and training in two programs—Partners in Learning and Unlimited Potential.

Partners in Learning uses technology to enhance K-12 teaching and education, while Unlimited Potential focuses on IT skills training outside of formal education to displaced workers, disadvantaged youth, and refugees. Both programs are carried out in partnership with governments, NGOs, and community organizations. Over the past three years, Microsoft has invested more than $250 million in communities around the world through these two programs.

To that end, we have set an ambitious goal -- to enhance the technology skills of a quarter of a billion underserved people by 2010.

We have many programs that focus specifically on teaching women IT skills, such as our partnership with The Center of Arab Women for Training and Research in Tunisia, which promotes Arab women’s participation in development. We have several programs in India that help women acquire skills to enter the workforce. And in China we have a program in Beijing and several other cities for migrant workers to learn technology skills.

While these programs have a broad reach, we recognized that we had to take these programs to geographies and to populations that might not readily be accessible or visible. Our employees knew, based on our experience working with refugees and internally displaced people, that we could help bring access and visibility through technology.

In 1999, as the Kosovo refugee crisis was unfolding, a group of Microsoft employees from a dozen countries contacted UNHCR to volunteer their time and technical knowledge to help the agency. The Microsoft employees worked with UNHCR and other partners to develop a mobile registration system to provide more than half a million Kosovo refugees with new identification documents, making it easier for many refugees to receive critical services and to locate missing family members.

That mobile registration system evolved into the Refugee Field Kit 2000, which was used by UNHCR in more than a dozen countries worldwide.

Expanding on the mobile registration concept, Microsoft and UNHCR developed Project Profile, a data system that compiles photographs and detailed information about refugees and their special needs.

Seventy Microsoft employees so far have volunteered their time and expertise to help Project Profile members set up the registration process in UNHCR camps in 41 countries.

Through the Unlimited Potential program, Microsoft is also helping UNHCR and other partners provide IT training opportunities for refugees in community learning centers in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tanzania, and elsewhere.

In St. Petersburg, Russia, for example, we are working with the Red Cross and UNHCR to provide IT skills development for 4000 refugees from Africa and Afghanistan who have found temporary refuge in that city.

In Afghanistan, where 85 percent of women are illiterate, Microsoft partners with local nonprofit groups and the United Nations Development Program, to support reconstruction of technology infrastructure in the country, and to provide women with basic computer literacy for entry into the workforce.

These are just a few examples and we are just beginning. We are privileged to work with such outstanding community organizations, and to provide so many courageous women, with tools to enable their voices to be heard and skills to find new opportunities.

On behalf of the women and men of Microsoft, thank you.

Allison Anderson, Focal Point,
Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE)

In 1999, the Women’s Commission co-organized one of the first ever conferences on education in emergencies at the World Bank. We owe a great debt to the work of the extraordinary Mary Anne Schwalbe and late Mary Diaz. Thank you Women’s Commission!

Many people in the humanitarian community mistakenly believe that education is of secondary importance. Education for refugee children is critical and urgent. It is about recognizing basic human rights. It gives refugee girls and boys the skills they need to access freedom, to grow their families, communities and countries -- to pursue peace.

The Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies—or INEE—grew out of the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000. Participants there realized they needed to create an inter-agency network, a communication tool if you will, to link their paths and allow them to work together to improve response to emergency education. INEE is that tool. For instance, the African Union does not yet have a policy on refugee education. They’ve asked us for help and we have linked them to experts and INEE members who are now working with them to develop that policy. After the earthquake in Pakistan, we linked our members with each other in order to form an effective and coordinated education response.

Since 2000, INEE has grown to a global network of over thirteen hundred members. It includes NGOs, UN agencies, donors, governments, academics and most importantly, refugee teachers and students working together to ensure the right to education in emergencies and post-crisis reconstruction. Through INEE’s website and listserv, we share lessons learned and new materials with members so they can build upon the successes and incorporate learning from around the world to create better quality and safer education for refugee girls and boys.

We also produce global standards to help everyone speak the same language. INEE’s development of the Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies, Chronic Crises and Early Reconstruction reflects our mission to ensure that refugee children and youth have access to education – education that keeps them safe and is relevant to their lives. They are based on hundreds of consultations that we facilitated around the world with refugee students, teaches and community members. The standards hold the humanitarian community to account for providing quality education without discrimination. Since the standards were launched in December of 2004, they have been used in over 60 countries.

We need to secure the recognition of education as a necessary component of all relief efforts. This award represents one step toward that goal. It provides increased awareness of and recognition for the accomplishments achieved through INEE’s inter-agency coordination and the collaboration of thousands of colleagues and partners, many of whom are refugee women and children.

This is my challenge to you: at present time, the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee, the most powerful global actor in humanitarian response, is deciding how relief is provided and to whom. At this time, unbelievably, education is not on their list. If you know anyone to talk to about this, TALK.

We at the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies will continue to work with the Women’s Commission and other partners on this. Thank you for your invaluable support.

Christiana Thorpe, co-founder,
Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) – Sierra Leone

It is with humble joy that I accept this prestigious award on my own behalf and that of my organisation the Forum for African Women Educationalists FAWE-Sierra Leone Chapter.

Working in Education in Emergencies has accorded me the opportunity to contribute to the emotional, psychological and physical rehabilitation of my country, and I thank all our partners for the support and encouragement through awards like this one.

Some years ago I received a postcard saying “if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” I have tried both and I am here to share my findings with you.

Education is definitely about academics, but it is even more so about economics. Whenever education is neglected for whatever reason, the resulting costs become very high.

I am from Sierra Leone in West Africa, where we practice the extended family system. We were eight siblings, and myself and a younger sister grew up with my grandmother in a slum area of the city. At the early age of six years I became conscious that my sister and I were different. In the neighborhood, we were the only girl children going to school. After school grandma insisted on us doing our homework instead of playing with the other children, which I vehemently disliked. At age 14 when I was in junior high school, some of my peers had started having babies, and as I speak to you now, at least two of them are great-grandmothers. What I am saying is that we have a new generation every fourteen to fifteen years. This, my dear friends, has cost Sierra Leone.

The Rebel War started in Sierra Leone in 1991. Most of the uneducated and unemployed young people became easy fodder for the architects of this war. By 1995 it had gained momentum. At that time I was Minister of Education. Thousands of displaced children were in the streets – roaming and loitering. In June 1995, we started an Emergency Displaced Camp School Program. Four-thousand-five-hundred children at both primary and junior high school were occupied for five hours every day. We taught them reading, writing and arithmetic. We gave them a meal a day, provided counseling sessions, and plenty of games and sports.

Two hundred and fifty girls aged 14 to 15 who came to register were pregnant. This discovery was shocking to us because we knew they were cases of rape. So we started a school for pregnant girls and teenage mothers. The girls learned livelihood skills and vocational skills.

Please allow me to share with you an incident that happened once on my way back to Sierra Leone after getting a visa. My journey would normally have been six hours, but it took twelve hours because the roads were so bad. At the border, a lady of about eighteen to twenty years of age came up to me. She carried a plastic bag, and in that bag, there were two cans of ice cold soft drinks. Since I had been traveling for so long, I was very thirsty. The young women came up to me and said “Auntie, Auntie. This is for you.” Surprised, I asked “Who are you,” and she responded “Oh Auntie, you don’t recognize me. I was in your FAWE centre and did catering and food sciences.” The girl then showed me her shop: she had a little kiosk at the border town, where she sells drinks and sandwiches. Her baby, who had been in our nursery, has been enrolled in the primary school in the area. All the fatigue caused by my journey just disappeared. I felt so happy as I could see the difference that has been made in one person’s life. What a transformation!

On the 25 th of May 1997, there was a coup d’etat. I was out of the country and learnt about it through CNN. There was a mass exodus of Sierra Leoneans to neighboring Guinea. My home was ransacked and my family had to flee as well. I joined them later and we were in exile for almost a year.

The day I arrived in Conakry, I went to the Sierra Leone Embassy to register. The soldiers were at their wits end trying to maintain order. Sometimes they became violent with the crowd. We started a school to keep the children and young people out of harm’s way. There were three-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-eight children and young people between ages 6 – 25 years in the school.

At the end of the program I received a thank you letter from one of them called Mariama.

Dear Ms. Christiana Thorpe,

I am very happy to write you this letter because you have done so much for me that I need to say thanks.

You promised to help me, if anything concerning sponsorship comes up and indeed you fulfilled your promise. I was expected to do computer literacy in the FAWE training programme for Sierra Leonean children and youth exiled in Conakry and now you have given me a special gift. You have not only given me knowledge in computer which will be useful to me for the rest of my life, but also transport to return home.

Thank you very much for what you have done for me and my fellow Sierra Leoneans. It is a gift which we can never forget and anytime I sit in front of a computer I will remember what FAWE has done for me. Once again, thank you very much for what you have done for me and I pray that you may continue doing the same for others who may be in the same situation.

Goodbye and God bless.
Mariama D. Bah
Trainee

On that note I would also like to say thank you and God bless to you all.

Aziza Ishaqzai, Head Teacher of a girls' school, Pakistan

I strongly believe in education, and since my childhood was very interested in receiving an education. As a child, watching my brothers and cousins going to school encouraged me greatly to learn about the world. With the help of my father, I was enrolled in our village school at the age of seven.

However, when I reached grade 9, our villagers put a lot of pressure on my father to stop me from going to school.

Can you imagine that if my father – who was an influential tribal elder – could not resist the pressure and had to stop my education, what happened to other girls from our village who also would have liked to go to school?

The majority of girls in Afghanistan are still deprived of education. And the men of the respective communities are strongly objecting to girls’ education even today.

Coming to Pakistan as a refugee, I was very fortunate to work for the realization of my dreams – educating the girls of our refugee village. With the help of Save the Children/US, I first opened a home-based girls’ school. Later, I opened a non-formal education center for teaching mathematics and life skills to the women of our camp. I have been the head teacher of an all-girls’ refugee school and the chairperson of the Women’s Education Committee of our village since 1999. Currently, there are 285 girls studying in our school – with eleven girls in Grade 10.

In my everyday life, I quite often come across girls who face a lot of problems with regard to their education. One such girl, Benazira, is now working as a teacher in one of our schools. She was kept away from education by her step mother who didn’t want her to get an education. One day she told her parents that she was going to meet her neighbors – but she came to my home instead. She cried and requested me to meet her parents so that they would allow her to go to school. When I saw this girl’s positive passion and interest towards education, I started visiting her home regularly. Finally I succeeded in getting Benazira admitted into the refugee village school and since then she has been getting an education.

After graduating from grade six, Benazira started working as a teacher in Save the Children’s refugee village school. Besides that she is still continuing her education in grade eight. She supports her parents with her monthly salary. Now they are happy and proud of her.

While supporting my two handicapped daughters, I have not lost hope to work for the education of our girls with strong dedication and commitment. Through education, women are not only enlightened about their rights and social responsibilities but are better equipped and informed to actively and effectively participate in the development of their societies. Educated Afghan women can also contribute to the peace process in our country.

In this valuable endeavor, I have been very lucky to receive strong support from the Education Committee and all the mothers of our camp in sending their daughters to our school. I could not believe that one day, I would be so privileged to receive such a distinguished Award. I worked only for what I believed and still believe that receiving education is a very valuable and everlasting treasure that can not be lost or stolen.

I want to sincerely thank my father, the staff from Save the Children, and members of the Women’s Education Committee for their strong support in working for my dreams and aspirations.

In the end I want to heartily thank the Women’s Commission for bestowing me with such a distinguished Voices of Courage Award.

I want to assure you that I will continue my efforts towards educating Afghan girls wherever and whenever I can – in Pakistan or inside Afghanistan – as long as I have mental and physical power and ability!

God Bless You All!