I’m walking to the slums and my heart is
racing
I’m on this try dirt path there are pigs
and goats up ahead from the smell of
things they had come the same way that
we had I got my backpack on hot to be a
hundred degrees outside
I don’t know if that’s why I’m sweating
growing up in Westchester
I always liked helping people and as I
got older I started looking at how I
could turn that into a career so I
volunteered at a lot of different
nonprofits I kept feeling like it’s
impossible as it is to measure need
there are more and bigger needs abroad
so I started looking into extreme
poverty which is when you’re living on
less than a dollar 90 a day so you’re
waking up in the morning and you’re
asking yourself do I give my child
clothing today or food it turns out
there’s seven hundred and sixty-seven
million people living in extreme poverty
and I kind of felt like these are people
who probably given up maybe are a little
bit less competent and I don’t know how
to save them definitely not 767 million
of them and so I pushed it out of my
mind because it was almost too
overwhelming not to and I went back to
the nonprofit’s but coming back to that
feeling so finally I said you know what
if I’m really going to consider
saving people in extreme poverty as my
career I got to learn more about this so
I signed up to be a teacher in the slums
in Mumbai India and I’m walking with my
soon-to-be co-teachers trying to prepare
myself for this world of hopelessness
that we signed up for we walk into the
slabs and the first thing you notice are
the houses and houses go forever and
there’s this mountain off in the
distance and there are houses going up
the mountain and they don’t look like
houses here the hair made of tin and
cement and tile and there’s no spaces at
all between the houses they’re stacked
up next to each other like cubicles I’m
taking all this in and it’s all of the
hopelessness that I had imagined so you
start walking
and as we do there’s these teenagers
that approach us and introduce
themselves I’m looking at the conditions
that they’re living in and I don’t
understand why they’re smiling we keep
on walking and as we turn there are
these men laughing in a storefront and
they don’t seem sad either so like I
stopped walking and I look around but I
stopped focusing on the buildings and
started looking at the people and their
kids playing in the street women hanging
out in their doorways realize this isn’t
hopelessness at all
this is resilience four weeks go by and
we pull into this rural village now I
haven’t been to a rural village before I
haven’t really been to rural before and
it’s very green there are these rolling
hills with marshes that kind of blend
into the landscape and there are people
in the marshes water up to here picking
rice to eat and just beyond the marshes
there are houses made of mud and straw
so we’ve highlight of a band and we’re
greeted by these very very friendly
looking locals and they introduced
themselves as Kenneth and toys
you can’t says I’m so excited to show
you guys the school that we built here
together with the villages
thanks to your programs funding
so we follow Kenneth now I’m walking
with my friend ELISA who is my
co-teacher in the slums and also has ten
years experience teaching and developing
curricula back in New York and the two
of us kind of fall to the back to where
toys is and we started talking about the
school toys I says well we want to make
sure that we are tracking our classes by
abilities but we didn’t want that to
affect how the kids view themselves so
we named the classes cars boats and
planes oh and we also know the kids hit
their strides at different points so we
make reevaluation that happen every
quarter and they’re done through games
the kids don’t even realize and that
allows us to cater our programming to
all the children oh and we redid our
whole math curriculum so that it’s based
off the kids lives here so she goes
ahead and I’m looking at Alisa she says
sorry we are in a rural village the
houses here are mud and straw do you
know how much people have been had in
pay for this curriculum now the answer
is No
but before I do respond we get to the
classrooms we go away in the kids super
cute we play some games it’s like a
little bit awkward at first they’re a
lot more reserved than our students are
in the slums but they get it eventually
it’s a lot of fun we start heading back
to a van and alleys and I do need to
know how they did this so you go up the
Kenneth and he laughs like look toys and
I we don’t have backgrounds in education
but your program offered to fund this
and this is a really big issue here and
it has been for a really long time so we
researched saw what was coming out of
the Harvard School of Education and we
built the school around it okay
most probably a little bit off on that
incompetent thing okay
so week goes by we’re back in the slums
classes could not be going better we
cover health hydration cultures around
the world the kids are sponges spongy
and I’m really excited about today
because today we’re teaching about
careers so we sit down in our circle and
I tell the kids a story and the life of
Marina Silva a marina grew up on a
rubber tapping plantation in northern
Brazil up in the Amazon ten brothers and
sisters she’s gets malaria five times by
sixteen both her parents are dead and
then she gets hepatitis so she goes to
the city to get treatment and whilst she
is there these nuns take her in and they
teach her how to read and write
suddenly marina can go to high school
and she goes to college she gets
involved in politics by 36 she’s the
first person from a rubber tapping
plantation elected to the Senate nine
years later she’s the country’s Minister
of Energy and she cuts deforestation in
the Amazon by 60 percent
to finish the story finish the story
look at my watch and we got 10 minutes
left before lunch
now I take lunch very seriously the part
of that’s because I always take your
lunch very seriously but I also know
that for a lot of my kids this is the
only food they’re getting today so I
tell the kids close your eyes imagine
yourselves being whoever whatever you
want to be when you grow up and they do
and we start to share Saleem and the
black shirt says I want to be a doctor
Brielle and the pink next to him I’m
gonna be a scientist
that’s your paw with the blue tie and
best dress thing I’m gonna be a pilot in
hands ear after this we start calling
him tens a year engineer looking these
kids who realize they really can be
doctors and scientists and engineers and
Marina Silva’s and everything clicks the
resilience of the people in the slums
the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the
people in the villages the potential and
dreams that these kids have like we all
have I come to India so I can figure out
how to save all these people the first
time I realized what if
I’m asking the wrong question Marina
Silva she didn’t need anyone to save her
she needed to learn how to read can it
toys are the people in the some villages
they didn’t need anyone to save them
they needed funding for their school
these kids don’t need anyone to save
them you need an education food chance
what if what we really need to be doing
is removing the barriers providing the
resources so T’s people can save
themselves because too often we think of
extreme poverty and we think they’re
incompetent I don’t know how to save
them and we push it away but they’re not
incompetent
we don’t need to save them so you don’t
have to push it away there are seven
hundred and sixty-seven million people
living in extreme poverty so many are
just waiting to unlock their potential
so they can develop an F technology or
discovery in science or cure
so whatever caring looks like for you
whether that’s going to an event sharing
a video donating reading an article you
don’t have to go to India there’s seven
hundred and sixty-seven million people
waiting for us to care
let’s not push that away thank you
[Applause]
racing
I’m on this try dirt path there are pigs
and goats up ahead from the smell of
things they had come the same way that
we had I got my backpack on hot to be a
hundred degrees outside
I don’t know if that’s why I’m sweating
growing up in Westchester
I always liked helping people and as I
got older I started looking at how I
could turn that into a career so I
volunteered at a lot of different
nonprofits I kept feeling like it’s
impossible as it is to measure need
there are more and bigger needs abroad
so I started looking into extreme
poverty which is when you’re living on
less than a dollar 90 a day so you’re
waking up in the morning and you’re
asking yourself do I give my child
clothing today or food it turns out
there’s seven hundred and sixty-seven
million people living in extreme poverty
and I kind of felt like these are people
who probably given up maybe are a little
bit less competent and I don’t know how
to save them definitely not 767 million
of them and so I pushed it out of my
mind because it was almost too
overwhelming not to and I went back to
the nonprofit’s but coming back to that
feeling so finally I said you know what
if I’m really going to consider
saving people in extreme poverty as my
career I got to learn more about this so
I signed up to be a teacher in the slums
in Mumbai India and I’m walking with my
soon-to-be co-teachers trying to prepare
myself for this world of hopelessness
that we signed up for we walk into the
slabs and the first thing you notice are
the houses and houses go forever and
there’s this mountain off in the
distance and there are houses going up
the mountain and they don’t look like
houses here the hair made of tin and
cement and tile and there’s no spaces at
all between the houses they’re stacked
up next to each other like cubicles I’m
taking all this in and it’s all of the
hopelessness that I had imagined so you
start walking
and as we do there’s these teenagers
that approach us and introduce
themselves I’m looking at the conditions
that they’re living in and I don’t
understand why they’re smiling we keep
on walking and as we turn there are
these men laughing in a storefront and
they don’t seem sad either so like I
stopped walking and I look around but I
stopped focusing on the buildings and
started looking at the people and their
kids playing in the street women hanging
out in their doorways realize this isn’t
hopelessness at all
this is resilience four weeks go by and
we pull into this rural village now I
haven’t been to a rural village before I
haven’t really been to rural before and
it’s very green there are these rolling
hills with marshes that kind of blend
into the landscape and there are people
in the marshes water up to here picking
rice to eat and just beyond the marshes
there are houses made of mud and straw
so we’ve highlight of a band and we’re
greeted by these very very friendly
looking locals and they introduced
themselves as Kenneth and toys
you can’t says I’m so excited to show
you guys the school that we built here
together with the villages
thanks to your programs funding
so we follow Kenneth now I’m walking
with my friend ELISA who is my
co-teacher in the slums and also has ten
years experience teaching and developing
curricula back in New York and the two
of us kind of fall to the back to where
toys is and we started talking about the
school toys I says well we want to make
sure that we are tracking our classes by
abilities but we didn’t want that to
affect how the kids view themselves so
we named the classes cars boats and
planes oh and we also know the kids hit
their strides at different points so we
make reevaluation that happen every
quarter and they’re done through games
the kids don’t even realize and that
allows us to cater our programming to
all the children oh and we redid our
whole math curriculum so that it’s based
off the kids lives here so she goes
ahead and I’m looking at Alisa she says
sorry we are in a rural village the
houses here are mud and straw do you
know how much people have been had in
pay for this curriculum now the answer
is No
but before I do respond we get to the
classrooms we go away in the kids super
cute we play some games it’s like a
little bit awkward at first they’re a
lot more reserved than our students are
in the slums but they get it eventually
it’s a lot of fun we start heading back
to a van and alleys and I do need to
know how they did this so you go up the
Kenneth and he laughs like look toys and
I we don’t have backgrounds in education
but your program offered to fund this
and this is a really big issue here and
it has been for a really long time so we
researched saw what was coming out of
the Harvard School of Education and we
built the school around it okay
most probably a little bit off on that
incompetent thing okay
so week goes by we’re back in the slums
classes could not be going better we
cover health hydration cultures around
the world the kids are sponges spongy
and I’m really excited about today
because today we’re teaching about
careers so we sit down in our circle and
I tell the kids a story and the life of
Marina Silva a marina grew up on a
rubber tapping plantation in northern
Brazil up in the Amazon ten brothers and
sisters she’s gets malaria five times by
sixteen both her parents are dead and
then she gets hepatitis so she goes to
the city to get treatment and whilst she
is there these nuns take her in and they
teach her how to read and write
suddenly marina can go to high school
and she goes to college she gets
involved in politics by 36 she’s the
first person from a rubber tapping
plantation elected to the Senate nine
years later she’s the country’s Minister
of Energy and she cuts deforestation in
the Amazon by 60 percent
to finish the story finish the story
look at my watch and we got 10 minutes
left before lunch
now I take lunch very seriously the part
of that’s because I always take your
lunch very seriously but I also know
that for a lot of my kids this is the
only food they’re getting today so I
tell the kids close your eyes imagine
yourselves being whoever whatever you
want to be when you grow up and they do
and we start to share Saleem and the
black shirt says I want to be a doctor
Brielle and the pink next to him I’m
gonna be a scientist
that’s your paw with the blue tie and
best dress thing I’m gonna be a pilot in
hands ear after this we start calling
him tens a year engineer looking these
kids who realize they really can be
doctors and scientists and engineers and
Marina Silva’s and everything clicks the
resilience of the people in the slums
the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the
people in the villages the potential and
dreams that these kids have like we all
have I come to India so I can figure out
how to save all these people the first
time I realized what if
I’m asking the wrong question Marina
Silva she didn’t need anyone to save her
she needed to learn how to read can it
toys are the people in the some villages
they didn’t need anyone to save them
they needed funding for their school
these kids don’t need anyone to save
them you need an education food chance
what if what we really need to be doing
is removing the barriers providing the
resources so T’s people can save
themselves because too often we think of
extreme poverty and we think they’re
incompetent I don’t know how to save
them and we push it away but they’re not
incompetent
we don’t need to save them so you don’t
have to push it away there are seven
hundred and sixty-seven million people
living in extreme poverty so many are
just waiting to unlock their potential
so they can develop an F technology or
discovery in science or cure
so whatever caring looks like for you
whether that’s going to an event sharing
a video donating reading an article you
don’t have to go to India there’s seven
hundred and sixty-seven million people
waiting for us to care
let’s not push that away thank you
[Applause]
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