WEBVTT

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The world today has many problems.

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And they're all very complicated
and interconnected and difficult.

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But there is something we can do.

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I believe

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that girls' education is the closest thing
we have to a silver bullet

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to help solve some of the world's
most difficult problems.

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But you don't have to take my word for it.

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The World Bank says

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that girls' education
is one of the best investments

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that a country can make.

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It helps to positively impact

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nine of the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals.

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Everything from health,
nutrition, employment --

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all of these are positively impacted
when girls are educated.

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Additionally, climate scientists
have recently rated girls' education

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at number six out of 80 actions
to reverse global warming.

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At number six, it's rated higher
than solar panels and electric cars.

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And that's because
when girls are educated,

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they have smaller families,

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and the resulting reduction in population

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reduces carbon emissions significantly.

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But more than that, you know,
it's a problem we have to solve once.

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Because an educated mother
is more than twice as likely

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to educate her children.

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Which means that by doing it once,

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we can close the gender
and literacy gap forever.

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I work in India,

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which has made incredible progress

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in bringing elementary education for all.

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However, we still have
four million out-of-school girls,

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one of the highest in the world.

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And girls are out of school
because of, obviously poverty,

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social, cultural factors.

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But there's also this
underlying factor of mindset.

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I have met a girl
whose name was Naraaz Nath.

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Naaraaz means angry.

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And when I asked her,
"Why is your name 'angry'?"

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she said, "Because everybody
was so angry when a girl was born."

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Another girl called Antim Bala,

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which means the last girl.

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Because everybody hoped
that would be the last girl to be born.

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A girl called Aachuki.

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It means somebody who has arrived.

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Not wanted, but arrived.

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And it is this mindset

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that keeps girls from school
or completing their education.

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It's this belief that a goat is an asset

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and a girl is a liability.

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My organization Educate Girls
works to change this.

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And we work in some
of the most difficult, rural,

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remote and tribal villages.

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And how do we do it?

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We first and foremost find

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young, passionate, educated youth
from the same villages.

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Both men and women.

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And we call them Team Balika,

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balika just means the girl child,

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so this is a team that we are creating
for the girl child.

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And so once we recruit
our community volunteers,

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we train them, we mentor them,
we hand-hold them.

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That's when our work starts.

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And the first piece we do
is about identifying every single girl

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who's not going to school.

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But the way we do it
is a little different and high-tech,

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at least in my view.

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Each of our frontline staff
have a smartphone.

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It has its own Educate Girls app.

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And this app has everything
that our team needs.

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It has digital maps of where
they're going to be conducting the survey,

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it has the survey in it,
all the questions,

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little guides on how best
to conduct the survey,

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so that the data that comes to us
is in real time and is of good quality.

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So armed with this,

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our teams and our volunteers
go door-to-door

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to every single household
to find every single girl

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who may either we never enrolled
or dropped out of school.

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And because we have this data
and technology piece,

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very quickly we can figure out
who the girls are and where they are.

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Because each of our
villages are geotagged,

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and we can actually
build that information out

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very, very quickly.

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And so once we know where the girls are,

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we actually start the process
of bringing them back into school.

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And that actually is just
our community mobilization process,

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it starts with village meetings,
neighborhood meetings,

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and as you see, individual counseling
of parents and families,

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to be able to bring the girls
back into school.

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And this can take anything
from a few weeks to a few months.

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And once we bring the girls
into the school system,

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we also work with the schools

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to make sure that schools
have all the basic infrastructure

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so that the girls will be able to stay.

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And this would include
a separate toilet for girls,

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drinking water,

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things that will help them to be retained.

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But all of this would be useless
if our children weren't learning.

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So we actually run a learning program.

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And this is a supplementary
learning program,

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and it's very, very important,

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because most of our children
are first-generation learners.

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That means there's nobody at home
to help them with homework,

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there's nobody who can support
their education.

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Their parents can't read and write.

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So it's really, really key

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that we do the support
of the learning in the classrooms.

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So this is essentially our model,

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in terms of finding,
bringing the girls in,

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making sure that
they're staying and learning.

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And we know that our model works.

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And we know this because

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a most recent randomized
control evaluation

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confirms its efficacy.

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Our evaluator found
that over a three-year period

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Educate Girls was able to bring back
92 percent of all out-of-school girls

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back into school.

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(Applause)

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And in terms of learning,

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our children's learning
went up significantly

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as compared to control schools.

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So much so, that it was
like an additional year of schooling

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for the average student.

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And that's enormous,

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when you think about a tribal child
who's entering the school system

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for the first time.

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So here we have a model that works;

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we know it's scalable,

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because we are already functioning
at 13,000 villages.

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We know it's smart,

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because of the use of data and technology.

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We know that it's
sustainable and systemic,

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because we work in partnership
with the community,

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it's actually led by the community.

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And we work in partnership
with the government,

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so there's no creation
of a parallel delivery system.

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And so because we have
this innovative partnership

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with the community,
the government, this smart model,

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we have this big, audacious dream today.

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And that is to solve
a full 40 percent of the problem

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of out-of-school girls in India
in the next five years.

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(Applause)

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And you're thinking, that's a little ...

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You know, how am I even thinking
about doing that,

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because India is not a small place,
it's a huge country.

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It's a country of over a billion people.

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We have 650,000 villages.

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How is it that I'm standing here,

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saying that one small organization

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is going to solve a full
40 percent of the problem?

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And that's because we have a key insight.

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And that is,

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because of our entire approach,
with data and with technology,

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that five percent of villages in India

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have 40 percent
of the out-of-school girls.

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And this is a big,
big piece of the puzzle.

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Which means, I don't have to work
across the entire country.

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I have to work in those
five percent of the villages,

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about 35,000 villages,

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to actually be able to solve
a large piece of the problem.

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And that's really key,

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because these villages

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not only have high burden
of out-of-school girls,

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but also a lot of
related indicators, right,

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like malnutrition, stunting,
poverty, infant mortality,

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child marriage.

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So by working and focusing here,

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you can actually create
a large multiplier effect

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across all of these indicators.

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And it would mean

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that we would be able to bring back
1.6 million girls back into school.

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(Applause)

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I have to say, I have been
doing this for over a decade,

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and I have never met a girl
who said to me,

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you know, "I want to stay at home,"

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"I want to graze the cattle,"

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"I want to look after the siblings,"

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"I want to be a child bride."

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Every single girl I meet
wants to go to school.

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And that's what we really want to do.

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We want to be able to fulfill
those 1.6 million dreams.

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And it doesn't take much.

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To find and enroll a girl
with our model is about 20 dollars.

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To make sure that she is learning
and providing a learning program,

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it's another 40 dollars.

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But today is the time to do it.

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Because she is truly
the biggest asset we have.

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I am Safeena Husain, and I educate girls.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)