today I want to talk about the power of
a single story in 2012 I decided to go
to the Middle East to start my
internship and the reason that I wanted
to go to the Middle East is because I
was very interested in politics and in
conflict resolutions and once I arrived
to the Middle East I kind of realized
that everything in the Middle East is
political and I also realized very soon
that I didn’t really like politics
because politics
I felt always that it was dividing us
and it doesn’t really connect people to
each other I started my internship at an
organization that facilitates dialogues
between different kinds of people people
from all different walks of life
so the workshops that I would organize
for example we would have people coming
that were maybe Muslims or Jews or even
Christians or people that had religions
that I’ve never heard of in my life and
it works is that I would organize would
look something like this people would
gather around in a circle and we would
just sit there and those gatherings they
were not focused on politics they were
actually focused on human stories on who
are we as people and what matters to us
and so for me those gatherings felt like
a very safe place and it felt like a
place where people could actually speak
from their heart and conflict and
politics would not never be between us
and I remember this one time we were
sitting here all together and it was
actually when this picture was taken
it was very silent and we were all
sitting in a group together and all of a
sudden this Palestinian lady she started
to speak and she explained that recently
she had desired decided to get a divorce
from her husband she had been in a very
abusive relationship for the past 20
years and she could no longer take it
and while she shared her story she was
actually crying
and I remember that people that were
sitting around her again they were all
different people they were Israelis
Palestinians and he will all sit there
and cry with her they felt emotional
over her story and even though they had
so many reasons not to connect they
would connect over the fact that she was
crying and they did and that they could
feel how she felt and that’s exactly
when I discovered the power of
storytelling you didn’t need any other
reason than that to connect with someone
at the time I was living in tel-aviv and
then Tel Aviv is a very diverse City
it’s a city where it’s a city of
contrasts you have all different kinds
of people you have religious people not
so religious people secular people
people from all again different places
different colors and one thing I like
most about that city was the diversity
it was actually the thing that made the
city to what it was and I remember one
time I came home from one of those walks
around town and I was crawling on my
Facebook feed and I saw this page and it
was called humans of tel-aviv and I had
heard about it page humans of New York
before but because I was living in
tel-aviv and I saw that page and I was
like wait these people that I see on
these photographs over here I can
actually see them you know outside on
the street and but suddenly I had access
to their story and I thought wow this is
so cool
and I remember that night I just keep
reading and reading and reading and I
felt so inspired because I thought wow
all you need is a camera to actually go
out and talk to strangers in the end of
that year I returned from my internship
and I returned back to Amsterdam but
this time I felt really different than
before because this time I had a mission
I knew that I wanted to do something
with storytelling I wanted to be able to
do the same things that we would do in
those dialog workshops but this time I
wanted to be able to
do it online to share stories online
from the city that I was living in and
since I was living in Amsterdam I
thought you know what why not give it a
try
so on my birthday my father helped me to
get a camera and I gathered all my
courage and I put on a really big smile
and I decided to go out on the street
and actually this is the one of the
first portraits that I’ve taken this
portrait of these three guys three boys
in the market and the story says it was
only a quote will the camera make us
look even better well it wasn’t a really
interesting story and also the picture
it wasn’t that great but I felt great
because I had realized that I could do
this I could take my camera and I could
go outside and I could talk to all these
different people and I didn’t need any
excuses anymore because I had my excuse
and that was my camera and that actually
resulted in two humans around them it
resulted into a project that I was so
passionate about and I would go out on
the street almost every day with my
camera and I would walk around and I
would look for all these different kinds
of people and again I wasn’t really good
and the stories my writing wasn’t really
well English is not my native language
but I kept doing it every day over and
over and over again and once the stories
got better the community grew I got more
and more followers and that was actually
a really big part of why I kept being
motivated because not only could I share
a story but other people were responding
to that so there was this whole
dimension now to this project and once
the stories got better we grew and we
grew and we go and today humans Aram
stem has around five hundred thousand
followers worldwide so we have a group
of people I can connect to a group of
people that are connecting over stories
all over the world and one of the
stories that means a lot to me is this
one I met this man his name is Lena
and I met him in front of the
Rijksmuseum and when I approached him
his wife had recently passed away and it
was actually the first time that he went
out by himself on a social event and he
told me that it was very scary to him
because he would always hang out with
his wife and they would always go to
museums together but this time he went
by himself he explained that he would
see all these other couples and he would
feel a little lonely but at the same
time he said that he could hear her
voice he could hear her speak to him and
when he was waiting in line for the cue
he explained to me is a very impatient
person and he could hear his wife tell
him that you know he should calm it down
relax like you’re gonna your turn will
come and he said that made him really
feel good and it also made him feel good
the fact that he could do this by
himself so basically what we were doing
what I was doing I was building a
community not based on facts I mean
facts are all over the news but we were
building I was building a community over
stories and people could relate to other
people’s stories they felt really bad if
something bad happened to someone else
for example when I shared Lane is his
story other people felt really bad for
him but not only that they could connect
to him because they also maybe had lost
someone and then other people started to
share what it was like to go out for the
very first time
once you lost someone and how hard that
is and so all of a sudden we have all
these people talking about very personal
experiences but in a very powerful way
this is a headline that I found on a
website on an article and it says number
of Iraqis fleeing Mosul near 60,000 I
believe the total amount of Iraqis that
fled Mosul which is a city in Iraq is
half a million people that’s a lot of
people but honestly if I read something
like that and I have it quite often when
I read numbers in the in the newspaper
I cannot feel anything
not because I don’t care because I do
but I don’t know what 500,000 people
looks like I don’t know I don’t know
what it’s like to flee so the story
doesn’t have a face it’s just a fact and
facts are very very important it’s just
that I cannot connect to it I don’t feel
it in my heart and that’s why I want to
give you this example of Nizar nazar is
one of those people that fled masu he’s
one of those people this is one single
story of one single person and when I
sat down with him he explained to me
what it was like to leave your country
to leave everything behind everything
you know your work your friends your
family everything he even had to leave
behind eight of his cats and he loves
cats so can you imagine to leave your
pet behind that’s very very hard he also
explained what it was like to come here
to make that dangerous journey that
we’ve all heard about so many times what
it’s like to go on a rubber boat and to
cross the sea that’s very very dangerous
and because I could talk to him and
because I could see him and I could look
into his eyes there was a person it’s no
longer effect it’s no longer something
that I would read in an article or see
on the news
Nizar isn’t was no longer a statistic to
me he’s a person and so I can connect
over emotions and not over facts the
same happened when I saw this story the
headline says it’s in Dutch but I’ll
translate it to English it says two year
old girl from Amsterdam is kidnapped by
father and I kept reading the article
and I found out that this young mother
Nadya her child in CI was kidnapped by
her ex-husband he what she was smuggled
out of the EU and he smuggled her to
India to Mumbai and something about it I
just wanted to know more and I wanted to
know what the story behind was because
that couldn’t be all it those facts it
couldn’t be there has to be something
behind it so I started reading and
reading and so I decided why not just
contact her you know we have Facebook
it’s so easy these days you can just
contact
people I mean you never know if they
will reply obviously but you can try so
I wrote her a message and I said that I
couldn’t believe how she must have felt
the your daughter it must be everything
to you and then when you lose it and
your child is kidnapped I don’t think
anyone wants to go through something
like that and I explained her about my
platform and I told her that if she
needed any help or I could help her
share the story she could contact me and
she replied and one month later we sat
down and I remember she invited me to
her home and we sat there for three
hours and she just kept talking and
explained what happened she explained
that she had been in a very abusive
relationship for a few years
emotionally and physically and she
explained that she felt ashamed she felt
ashamed because she was a highly
educated woman and she felt that it
wasn’t possible for a highly educated
woman to be treated like that by a man
so she never dared to really express
herself but then one day she did decide
to file for divorce she decided that
enough was enough
and so what happened was her life became
a living hell it became a nightmare from
that moment she received death threats
by her ex-husband she was even tracked
and traced and softt stalked GPS
trackers were placed under her car her
life was a hell until the 29th of
September and then was when everything
got even worse she was driving on the
highway when all of a sudden she
received a phone call from her nephew
and he was crying and he explained that
India was kidnapped two three men barged
into her mother’s home
so Nadia’s mother’s home and they’d
taken away the child the two-year-old
girl and she was smuggled out of the EU
to Mumbai to India from that moment on
Nadia has not been able to speak or see
her her daughter
so basically when I went home and she
explained me the whole story I just I
needed time really I needed time because
there was so much emotion in there I
needed time to understand what had
happened to her and I felt this huge
responsibility I felt a responsibility
to correctly write her story I wanted to
do her story justice because if you go
through something like that as a
storyteller you don’t want to disappoint
someone and especially I wanted to write
a good story because I knew that only
then I was able to reach a broad
audience people need to want to read a
story so this was the first post that I
wrote on Nadia
and I felt very nervous to post this
story usually I don’t feel so nervous
but this time I felt very nervous again
I felt very responsible and then once I
shared it people started to engage and
it was a five-part stories so every time
a new chapter would be added to the
story and once all the five stories were
up everyone was responsive everyone we
we got thousands of reactions and
comments and likes and shares and
everything so now people all over the
world knew what had happened to Nadia
and they knew about the kidnap also we
have a really great audience from India
and they had a lot of good tips and one
of them was that we should contact
India’s minister of External Affairs
Sushma Swaraj the reason for that is in
India she seems to be able to work
miracles she seems to be able to know a
lot about these kind of cases so she got
tagged over thousands and thousands of
times everyone started to check this
Minister to get her involved people
started to tweet her unfortunately she
didn’t respond which was really a big
shame but something else magical
happened the next day and that was the
fact this the PowerPoint actually cut it
off but we have really like if you go on
Google you see almost every Indian news
let picked up the story which was
amazing because I have a reach to
500,000 people but these news outlets
are huge so now the whole country a
country of 1.3 billion people was able
to read this story which was amazing
because they needed to know they needed
to know that a Dutch citizen is kept in
Mumbai and that’s illegal a few weeks
after it got quiet again around Nadia’s
story and we went back to regular
posting so I went back to posting
stories of the street but obviously I
didn’t want to leave Nadia like that I
wanted to help her I wanted to be able
to continue this story and so we thought
how what is a great way to mobilize all
these people and to give them also a
voice a voice to say where we don’t
agree with this there has to be a
solution so we came up with this
petition and we thought ok we’ll add
also a video to it because we need a
call of action people need to hear her
speak as well we address the petition to
the Dutch authorities and to the Indian
authorities and especially we were
addressing it to the minister of
External Affairs in India swooosh Sushma
Swaraj because she again seemed to be
able to work miracles everyone was
saying it so again we published a story
about an idea and this time we had
something for the audience to do they
could sign the petition and they did in
total of 40 1000 times people signed it
everyone was signing it people were
sharing it
as I said we addressed the petition to
dot the Dutch authorities and the
English the Indian authorities within 24
hours we had a response from the Dutch
Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Facebook
which is amazing I think that they would
respond on Facebook publicly for anyone
to read and anyone to see and they told
us that they felt for for for Nadia that
they were aware of what happened and
that it would do their utmost best to
reach the Indian authorities
unfortunately we had no response from
the Indian authorities at all a few days
later Nadia met up with the Dutch
Minister of Foreign Affairs red corners
and she over handed him the petition the
petition that we worked so hard for was
now in the hands of a politician which
was amazing because that’s where big big
decisions are being made he took it very
very seriously and a few months later he
introduced it to he gave it to mr.
Sushma Swaraj so this time there was no
way around it for her she had to accept
the fact that 41,000 people including
Nadia wanted a solution for this issue
for this matter and last week when our
prime minister met the Prime Minister of
India he also addressed this matter and
not only did he address this matter he
even had a phone call with Nadia for 15
minutes didn’t aid the day after it’s
not every day that the Prime Minister
calls you on your cell phone but he did
and he explained again that he will try
anything to help her and to find a
solution to this matter so the power of
one single story is immense right we can
activate people we can mobilize people
we can gather people through one single
story we can connect through one single
story and that’s amazing but I also want
to remind you that a story is more than
just a story there’s actually a real
real person behind
that story and that’s why I want to
introduce Nigella sheet to the stage
[Applause]
thank you thank you so much first of all
I would like to thank Deborah because if
it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be standing
here in front of you and she’s been an
immense support she has helped me but
mostly my daughter insya who doesn’t
have a voice but Deborah has given her
voice and she has given her face and a
lot of people now know about her it’s
very difficult to lose your child
especially when your child is a life and
you know where she is also when you
don’t know that you were about to lose
your child when my daughter got
kidnapped I that was the worst day of my
life and I did not know what was going
to happen me being a private person
sharing my story with people was just
not something I’ve ever thought of but
still when when INSEAD got kidnapped I
did not have any choice I needed the
help of people I needed to mobilize
people in order to make sure that I
would see my daughter again and life has
been a nightmare ever since but not
being able to talk to your now
three-year-old daughter for more than
nine months is something that you do not
need a parent you do not need to be a
parent to understand the kind of agony
that you go through we have made amazing
amazing progress to make sure that this
matter would get visibility and
attraction from the right people and the
right people are involved with it not
only that we got the story viral through
unions of Amsterdam but people in India
know it people all around the world know
it and everybody agrees on just one
thing that this is not something that
any child should go through and we are
still working hard day and night to make
sure that I would get to speak to her
and that she would know that mommy’s
there because somewhere in says waiting
for mommy to come and bring her back
home
and we just hope that this situation
comes to an end but we really couldn’t
do it without the help of thousands and
thousands of people who have been so
supporting and such a strength every
time when I feel down I go through the
messages and the kind of hope that
people give me keeps me going and that’s
something that I actually ought to you
thank you
[Applause]
a single story in 2012 I decided to go
to the Middle East to start my
internship and the reason that I wanted
to go to the Middle East is because I
was very interested in politics and in
conflict resolutions and once I arrived
to the Middle East I kind of realized
that everything in the Middle East is
political and I also realized very soon
that I didn’t really like politics
because politics
I felt always that it was dividing us
and it doesn’t really connect people to
each other I started my internship at an
organization that facilitates dialogues
between different kinds of people people
from all different walks of life
so the workshops that I would organize
for example we would have people coming
that were maybe Muslims or Jews or even
Christians or people that had religions
that I’ve never heard of in my life and
it works is that I would organize would
look something like this people would
gather around in a circle and we would
just sit there and those gatherings they
were not focused on politics they were
actually focused on human stories on who
are we as people and what matters to us
and so for me those gatherings felt like
a very safe place and it felt like a
place where people could actually speak
from their heart and conflict and
politics would not never be between us
and I remember this one time we were
sitting here all together and it was
actually when this picture was taken
it was very silent and we were all
sitting in a group together and all of a
sudden this Palestinian lady she started
to speak and she explained that recently
she had desired decided to get a divorce
from her husband she had been in a very
abusive relationship for the past 20
years and she could no longer take it
and while she shared her story she was
actually crying
and I remember that people that were
sitting around her again they were all
different people they were Israelis
Palestinians and he will all sit there
and cry with her they felt emotional
over her story and even though they had
so many reasons not to connect they
would connect over the fact that she was
crying and they did and that they could
feel how she felt and that’s exactly
when I discovered the power of
storytelling you didn’t need any other
reason than that to connect with someone
at the time I was living in tel-aviv and
then Tel Aviv is a very diverse City
it’s a city where it’s a city of
contrasts you have all different kinds
of people you have religious people not
so religious people secular people
people from all again different places
different colors and one thing I like
most about that city was the diversity
it was actually the thing that made the
city to what it was and I remember one
time I came home from one of those walks
around town and I was crawling on my
Facebook feed and I saw this page and it
was called humans of tel-aviv and I had
heard about it page humans of New York
before but because I was living in
tel-aviv and I saw that page and I was
like wait these people that I see on
these photographs over here I can
actually see them you know outside on
the street and but suddenly I had access
to their story and I thought wow this is
so cool
and I remember that night I just keep
reading and reading and reading and I
felt so inspired because I thought wow
all you need is a camera to actually go
out and talk to strangers in the end of
that year I returned from my internship
and I returned back to Amsterdam but
this time I felt really different than
before because this time I had a mission
I knew that I wanted to do something
with storytelling I wanted to be able to
do the same things that we would do in
those dialog workshops but this time I
wanted to be able to
do it online to share stories online
from the city that I was living in and
since I was living in Amsterdam I
thought you know what why not give it a
try
so on my birthday my father helped me to
get a camera and I gathered all my
courage and I put on a really big smile
and I decided to go out on the street
and actually this is the one of the
first portraits that I’ve taken this
portrait of these three guys three boys
in the market and the story says it was
only a quote will the camera make us
look even better well it wasn’t a really
interesting story and also the picture
it wasn’t that great but I felt great
because I had realized that I could do
this I could take my camera and I could
go outside and I could talk to all these
different people and I didn’t need any
excuses anymore because I had my excuse
and that was my camera and that actually
resulted in two humans around them it
resulted into a project that I was so
passionate about and I would go out on
the street almost every day with my
camera and I would walk around and I
would look for all these different kinds
of people and again I wasn’t really good
and the stories my writing wasn’t really
well English is not my native language
but I kept doing it every day over and
over and over again and once the stories
got better the community grew I got more
and more followers and that was actually
a really big part of why I kept being
motivated because not only could I share
a story but other people were responding
to that so there was this whole
dimension now to this project and once
the stories got better we grew and we
grew and we go and today humans Aram
stem has around five hundred thousand
followers worldwide so we have a group
of people I can connect to a group of
people that are connecting over stories
all over the world and one of the
stories that means a lot to me is this
one I met this man his name is Lena
and I met him in front of the
Rijksmuseum and when I approached him
his wife had recently passed away and it
was actually the first time that he went
out by himself on a social event and he
told me that it was very scary to him
because he would always hang out with
his wife and they would always go to
museums together but this time he went
by himself he explained that he would
see all these other couples and he would
feel a little lonely but at the same
time he said that he could hear her
voice he could hear her speak to him and
when he was waiting in line for the cue
he explained to me is a very impatient
person and he could hear his wife tell
him that you know he should calm it down
relax like you’re gonna your turn will
come and he said that made him really
feel good and it also made him feel good
the fact that he could do this by
himself so basically what we were doing
what I was doing I was building a
community not based on facts I mean
facts are all over the news but we were
building I was building a community over
stories and people could relate to other
people’s stories they felt really bad if
something bad happened to someone else
for example when I shared Lane is his
story other people felt really bad for
him but not only that they could connect
to him because they also maybe had lost
someone and then other people started to
share what it was like to go out for the
very first time
once you lost someone and how hard that
is and so all of a sudden we have all
these people talking about very personal
experiences but in a very powerful way
this is a headline that I found on a
website on an article and it says number
of Iraqis fleeing Mosul near 60,000 I
believe the total amount of Iraqis that
fled Mosul which is a city in Iraq is
half a million people that’s a lot of
people but honestly if I read something
like that and I have it quite often when
I read numbers in the in the newspaper
I cannot feel anything
not because I don’t care because I do
but I don’t know what 500,000 people
looks like I don’t know I don’t know
what it’s like to flee so the story
doesn’t have a face it’s just a fact and
facts are very very important it’s just
that I cannot connect to it I don’t feel
it in my heart and that’s why I want to
give you this example of Nizar nazar is
one of those people that fled masu he’s
one of those people this is one single
story of one single person and when I
sat down with him he explained to me
what it was like to leave your country
to leave everything behind everything
you know your work your friends your
family everything he even had to leave
behind eight of his cats and he loves
cats so can you imagine to leave your
pet behind that’s very very hard he also
explained what it was like to come here
to make that dangerous journey that
we’ve all heard about so many times what
it’s like to go on a rubber boat and to
cross the sea that’s very very dangerous
and because I could talk to him and
because I could see him and I could look
into his eyes there was a person it’s no
longer effect it’s no longer something
that I would read in an article or see
on the news
Nizar isn’t was no longer a statistic to
me he’s a person and so I can connect
over emotions and not over facts the
same happened when I saw this story the
headline says it’s in Dutch but I’ll
translate it to English it says two year
old girl from Amsterdam is kidnapped by
father and I kept reading the article
and I found out that this young mother
Nadya her child in CI was kidnapped by
her ex-husband he what she was smuggled
out of the EU and he smuggled her to
India to Mumbai and something about it I
just wanted to know more and I wanted to
know what the story behind was because
that couldn’t be all it those facts it
couldn’t be there has to be something
behind it so I started reading and
reading and so I decided why not just
contact her you know we have Facebook
it’s so easy these days you can just
contact
people I mean you never know if they
will reply obviously but you can try so
I wrote her a message and I said that I
couldn’t believe how she must have felt
the your daughter it must be everything
to you and then when you lose it and
your child is kidnapped I don’t think
anyone wants to go through something
like that and I explained her about my
platform and I told her that if she
needed any help or I could help her
share the story she could contact me and
she replied and one month later we sat
down and I remember she invited me to
her home and we sat there for three
hours and she just kept talking and
explained what happened she explained
that she had been in a very abusive
relationship for a few years
emotionally and physically and she
explained that she felt ashamed she felt
ashamed because she was a highly
educated woman and she felt that it
wasn’t possible for a highly educated
woman to be treated like that by a man
so she never dared to really express
herself but then one day she did decide
to file for divorce she decided that
enough was enough
and so what happened was her life became
a living hell it became a nightmare from
that moment she received death threats
by her ex-husband she was even tracked
and traced and softt stalked GPS
trackers were placed under her car her
life was a hell until the 29th of
September and then was when everything
got even worse she was driving on the
highway when all of a sudden she
received a phone call from her nephew
and he was crying and he explained that
India was kidnapped two three men barged
into her mother’s home
so Nadia’s mother’s home and they’d
taken away the child the two-year-old
girl and she was smuggled out of the EU
to Mumbai to India from that moment on
Nadia has not been able to speak or see
her her daughter
so basically when I went home and she
explained me the whole story I just I
needed time really I needed time because
there was so much emotion in there I
needed time to understand what had
happened to her and I felt this huge
responsibility I felt a responsibility
to correctly write her story I wanted to
do her story justice because if you go
through something like that as a
storyteller you don’t want to disappoint
someone and especially I wanted to write
a good story because I knew that only
then I was able to reach a broad
audience people need to want to read a
story so this was the first post that I
wrote on Nadia
and I felt very nervous to post this
story usually I don’t feel so nervous
but this time I felt very nervous again
I felt very responsible and then once I
shared it people started to engage and
it was a five-part stories so every time
a new chapter would be added to the
story and once all the five stories were
up everyone was responsive everyone we
we got thousands of reactions and
comments and likes and shares and
everything so now people all over the
world knew what had happened to Nadia
and they knew about the kidnap also we
have a really great audience from India
and they had a lot of good tips and one
of them was that we should contact
India’s minister of External Affairs
Sushma Swaraj the reason for that is in
India she seems to be able to work
miracles she seems to be able to know a
lot about these kind of cases so she got
tagged over thousands and thousands of
times everyone started to check this
Minister to get her involved people
started to tweet her unfortunately she
didn’t respond which was really a big
shame but something else magical
happened the next day and that was the
fact this the PowerPoint actually cut it
off but we have really like if you go on
Google you see almost every Indian news
let picked up the story which was
amazing because I have a reach to
500,000 people but these news outlets
are huge so now the whole country a
country of 1.3 billion people was able
to read this story which was amazing
because they needed to know they needed
to know that a Dutch citizen is kept in
Mumbai and that’s illegal a few weeks
after it got quiet again around Nadia’s
story and we went back to regular
posting so I went back to posting
stories of the street but obviously I
didn’t want to leave Nadia like that I
wanted to help her I wanted to be able
to continue this story and so we thought
how what is a great way to mobilize all
these people and to give them also a
voice a voice to say where we don’t
agree with this there has to be a
solution so we came up with this
petition and we thought ok we’ll add
also a video to it because we need a
call of action people need to hear her
speak as well we address the petition to
the Dutch authorities and to the Indian
authorities and especially we were
addressing it to the minister of
External Affairs in India swooosh Sushma
Swaraj because she again seemed to be
able to work miracles everyone was
saying it so again we published a story
about an idea and this time we had
something for the audience to do they
could sign the petition and they did in
total of 40 1000 times people signed it
everyone was signing it people were
sharing it
as I said we addressed the petition to
dot the Dutch authorities and the
English the Indian authorities within 24
hours we had a response from the Dutch
Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Facebook
which is amazing I think that they would
respond on Facebook publicly for anyone
to read and anyone to see and they told
us that they felt for for for Nadia that
they were aware of what happened and
that it would do their utmost best to
reach the Indian authorities
unfortunately we had no response from
the Indian authorities at all a few days
later Nadia met up with the Dutch
Minister of Foreign Affairs red corners
and she over handed him the petition the
petition that we worked so hard for was
now in the hands of a politician which
was amazing because that’s where big big
decisions are being made he took it very
very seriously and a few months later he
introduced it to he gave it to mr.
Sushma Swaraj so this time there was no
way around it for her she had to accept
the fact that 41,000 people including
Nadia wanted a solution for this issue
for this matter and last week when our
prime minister met the Prime Minister of
India he also addressed this matter and
not only did he address this matter he
even had a phone call with Nadia for 15
minutes didn’t aid the day after it’s
not every day that the Prime Minister
calls you on your cell phone but he did
and he explained again that he will try
anything to help her and to find a
solution to this matter so the power of
one single story is immense right we can
activate people we can mobilize people
we can gather people through one single
story we can connect through one single
story and that’s amazing but I also want
to remind you that a story is more than
just a story there’s actually a real
real person behind
that story and that’s why I want to
introduce Nigella sheet to the stage
[Applause]
thank you thank you so much first of all
I would like to thank Deborah because if
it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be standing
here in front of you and she’s been an
immense support she has helped me but
mostly my daughter insya who doesn’t
have a voice but Deborah has given her
voice and she has given her face and a
lot of people now know about her it’s
very difficult to lose your child
especially when your child is a life and
you know where she is also when you
don’t know that you were about to lose
your child when my daughter got
kidnapped I that was the worst day of my
life and I did not know what was going
to happen me being a private person
sharing my story with people was just
not something I’ve ever thought of but
still when when INSEAD got kidnapped I
did not have any choice I needed the
help of people I needed to mobilize
people in order to make sure that I
would see my daughter again and life has
been a nightmare ever since but not
being able to talk to your now
three-year-old daughter for more than
nine months is something that you do not
need a parent you do not need to be a
parent to understand the kind of agony
that you go through we have made amazing
amazing progress to make sure that this
matter would get visibility and
attraction from the right people and the
right people are involved with it not
only that we got the story viral through
unions of Amsterdam but people in India
know it people all around the world know
it and everybody agrees on just one
thing that this is not something that
any child should go through and we are
still working hard day and night to make
sure that I would get to speak to her
and that she would know that mommy’s
there because somewhere in says waiting
for mommy to come and bring her back
home
and we just hope that this situation
comes to an end but we really couldn’t
do it without the help of thousands and
thousands of people who have been so
supporting and such a strength every
time when I feel down I go through the
messages and the kind of hope that
people give me keeps me going and that’s
something that I actually ought to you
thank you
[Applause]
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