Providing education for all has been a dream and passion of mine for years.
Before Malala and Girl Rising and all the other awareness campaigns, the need for education has been blatantly obvious. Annual trips to Pakistan demonstrated this need when I would see thousands of children and young adults crowding the streets, during normal school and work hours. They would loiter, sit idly by the roads, play, beg, collect garbage or sell homemade items. But none of them were in school.
I was always amazed by the sheer volume of idle people in that country, but also by the tremendous waste of potential and intelligence. The homes I stayed in had young children as servants. They couldn’t read or write, but they could cook, clean, garden and do a number of other household chores. I was struck by the tragedy of their childhoods struck so short. Their hands were worn and weathered from hard labor, and their young faces lined and creased. It is a tremendously disarming thing to see children look and act as adults. It is even more troubling when you see the stress, worry and pain in their eyes.
There is an old scene that has been etched into my memory from one of my trips to Pakistan. My family and I were visiting our ancestral cemetery. The entrance to the cemetery was blocked by dozens of begging children. They wore tattered clothes, no shoes and intermittently played with a soccer ball. Th children were Afghani refugees, and it is no exaggeration that they were the most hauntingly beautiful children I’d ever seen.
(Photo: iStockphoto/ Thinkstock)
One girl, in particular, fascinated me. She had unkempt brown hair and wore a faded pink shirt as a dress. She also had the most stunningly blue eyes. They were the most unique shade of blue, and they conveyed so many emotions. They were sad, bright, insightful and hopeful all at the same time.
Decades later, I still remember that girl. If that girl had been born anywhere else in the world, she could have ruled her world. If she could have attended school instead of begging on the streets of Peshawar, she could have accomplished anything. I am sure of it. My brief exchange with her proved she was tremendously intelligent. This was not a girl who was destined to be a beggar. And yet, there she was, on the street with a dozen other children, asking for scraps of food and a few coins to feed her family.
This is the power of education. Education is the only tool that can transform a person’s life so radically.
It can literally uplift a beggar child into a doctor, teacher, scientist or anything else. I don’t know what happened to that stunning girl, but I can only hope she got the education she deserved.
There are countless girls like her around the world.
All bright, curious and stunning in their own ways, and all of them deserve an education.
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