DragonI

I’ve been thinking about pasting/sticking this up around the neighboring school areas. 

I think people need to know more about the stories of these young girls and people in those countries we talk about. I talk about Nigeria, I have met the girl who escaped from the Boko Haram kidnapping, and some were released recently so I met those girls as well, and I saw the girls—now called the Chibok girls—and I could see smiles on their faces. Now they have come back, they are going to live their normal lives, and it just reminds us women how important it is for us to have safety, to have protection, to have education. These girls have gone through so many difficulties. They value education. They know that this is the way you go forward. So seeing their commitment, seeing their interest in education, really inspires me. I go with the ambition that I can inspire them, but in return, they inspire me. Their stories are so powerful and moving. So, I would really tell people to try and hear these girls’ stories and maybe meet them and know more about them. We just hear about refugees in terms of numbers but we never hear their stories and what their lives are like. We never see it in reality, so I try to see it in reality.

Going and visiting the school and opening it was a really beautiful moment for me. To see all the young girls there and think that now, these girls are going to be going to school. They were living in these tents with no electricity—it was really hard there—and no clean water, but now they are going to have school and they are going to have teachers; they are going to be empowered. Also, we are opening a girls’ school in my home village in Shangla, and it is going to be an amazing opportunity for girls in that village—where they don’t have any higher secondary education facilities—to complete their education and to follow their dreams. It is going to bring great change in that whole village.

Animated funny movies. I think it depends on who you watch the movie with, like if I go with my friends. I’m a fan of Minions, Madagascar, and that kind of stuff. [Laughs]