And it is an honor to sit with you here today.
So actually my father has played a big role in my life.
And when I was born, my father's cousin, he brought the family tree,
and that was full of men's name, going 300 years back.
And there was no woman's name in it.
And my father, he took the pen and he wrote my name on it.
The first girls name on our family tree.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> So in my life my father was constantly taking steps to empower women,
to empower girls.
And actually I have four aunts my father's, five aunts,
my father's five sisters, and none of them could go to school.
So my father decide that he would educate his daughter.
He would give her the potential to go forward in her life.
So he did not stop me from seeking out when
organization started in [INAUDIBLE].
And there were many other young girls just like age 11 or 12,
they wanted to speak out, but their parents or
their brothers do not allow them to speak out.
There's nothing special in my story that I was maybe like trained, or
I was more talented or more clever than others.
There was nothing like that.
The only difference in my story is that no one stopped me.
My father believed in me, and he let me speak out.
So there is potentially women and girls, but they
need men like my father who believe in them, and who let them go forward.
And so this is the only thing my father has given me, to believe in myself.
He always listens to me, he has appreciated me right from the beginning and
allowed me to speak, because children and
especially young girls, they are not even given the opportunity to speak,
and then even if they speak, they're not taken seriously.
So my father took me seriously right from the beginning, allowed me to
speak and I'm so proud and so happy to have a father like him.
Otherwise, I would have just one of those
millions of girls who kept silent, who got married at age 13 and 14.
And never were able to come out and speak for
themselves and to show themselves to the world as themselves.
[SOUND]
