Why solving global issues is more accessible than we think (w/ Angeline Murimirwa)

0:00The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. In today's fast-changing digital world, proving your company is trustworthy isn't just important for growth, it's essential. That's why Vanta is here.

0:38Vanta helps companies of all sizes get compliant fast and stay that way, with industry-leading AI, automation, and continuous monitoring. So whether you're a startup tackling your first SOC 2 or ISO 27001, or an enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta's trust management platform makes it quicker, easier, and more scalable. Vanta also helps you complete security questionnaires up to five times faster, so you can win bigger deals sooner. The results? According to a recent IDC study, Vanta customers slash over$500 ,000 a year in costs and are three times more productive. Establishing trust isn't optional.

1:15Vanta makes it automatic. 10 ,000 global companies trust Vanta, including Atlassian, Cura, Chili Piper, and Factory. Visit vanta.com slash TED Audio to sign up for a free demo today. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash TED Audio.

1:37You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me or has listened to this show for a while to hear that I have always loved school. I love to learn. For fun these days as an adult, I take language classes. When I was in fourth grade, all that I asked for for my birthday was reference books. That's what I wanted as a present. And you know what? I got them. You have never seen a young boy more excited to receive an unabridged dictionary than I was. I used to carry around a book of obscure words for word lovers in my backpack.

2:13My favorite word, I'm so glad that you asked. It was defenestration, which means the act of throwing someone out a window. I thought that was hilarious. Am I painting a transpiculously clear picture for you? I think I am. I was a little nerd, a little teacher's pet, and I loved school. That is one of the reasons why I am so struck by today's guest, Angeline Murray-Mirwa. Growing up in Zimbabwe, she also loved school, but it wasn't always a given that she would get to continue her studies. Angie's journey through school to now running an international education organization, it's an inspiring journey.

2:48It's an incredible journey. But Angie is also passionate about making it so that kids don't have to have remarkable stories to get access to opportunities. And I think that the way she talks about making a difference and tackling big systemic issues, international issues, is going to be relevant to you wherever you live and whatever issue you feel most passionately about. Here's a clip from Angeline's TED Talk. To end poverty, educate a girl. To tackle climate change, educate a girl. To solve the health crisis? Educate a girl. It seems like girls' education is the closest thing we have to an actual silver bullet.

3:31There's just one problem. When you send a girl to school without radically reshaping the support structures around her, you're just putting a diploma in her hand, if she gets that far, and slotting her right back into a world of poverty and inequality. What's more, as one of the few survivors of his system staked against her, she'll feel isolated and overwhelmed by all of the expectations of how her education will somehow change everything. To change her trajectory and reap the benefits of girls' education, we have to lift the burden placed on the shoulders of each single girl, the pressure to beat the odds on their own, and to suddenly make the world a better place for everyone when they do.

4:26I'm excited to tell you there is a growing sisterhood of educated young women in Africa who are doing just that.

4:38We're going to be right back with more from Angie in just a moment.

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5:54The market's uncertain. Revenue's tight and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. In today's fast-changing digital world, proving your company is trustworthy isn't just important for growth, it's essential. That's why Vanta is here.

6:33Vanta helps companies of all sizes get compliant fast and stay that way, with industry-leading AI, automation, and continuous monitoring. So whether you're a startup tackling your first SOC 2 or ISO 27001 or an enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta's trust management platform makes it quicker, easier, and more scalable. Vanta also helps you complete security questionnaires up to five times faster, so you can win bigger deals sooner. The results? According to a recent IDC study, Vanta customers slash over$500 ,000 a year in costs and are three times more productive. Establishing trust isn't optional.

7:10Vanta makes it automatic. 10 ,000 global companies trust Vanta, including Atlassian, Cura, Chili Piper, and Factory. Visit vanta.com slash TED Audio to sign up for a free demo today. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash TED Audio.

7:28Today, we're talking with Angeline Murimirwa about education, opportunity and changing global systems. I am Angeline Murimirwa. Everybody calls me Angie. I am the CEO of CAMFED. First of all, we are recording this on the day after you were announced as one of the finalists for the Africa Education Medal. This is a huge deal. It's a really big international recognition of your work. I'm super excited. So is everybody at Comfort at this African education matter. But this is an education matter for everybody and everyone who has pulled their way, done the best that they can to support children across Africa to go to school and work with Comfort to be able to do that.

8:15So I'm super excited about it because this is coming after 30 years of us supporting girls on the continent to go to school. For people who aren't already familiar, what is CAMFED and how did you get involved with it? I just want to say it up front that I'm one of the very first girls supported through school by CAMFED. And to now become its chief executive officer is a huge blessing and tribute to everybody who supported me to date and the organization and speaks to our model. So Comfort is an organization, it's a movement that supports girls to go to school and young women to transition into secure livelihood and leadership.

8:54We say we support girls to learn and to lead. That's what we do. And we do this across Africa. We have got operations in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Ghana. We have got offices in the UK, in the US, Australia and Canada. And our work is fundamentally about giving girls a chance to go to school. We support girls who are from the lowest economic quintile in their communities. These are girls from the most marginalized communities where only 9 % complete secondary school. I think that sometimes I can get into the mindset that problems, big problems, are always really complicated. It's so hard to solve them.

9:32They're impossible. But I think you make a really compelling case that some problems aren't that complicated. it. If the problem is that girls don't have enough money to go to school, the solution is give them the resources they need and let them go to school. If the problem is that people are poor, they're poor because they don't have money. Give them money. You can solve some really big issues in the world in the simple, obvious way and make an enormous impact. They just require us using the resources that already exist in the world and deploying them more fairly and equitably. I like, Chris, how you have put this across.

10:06So the bottom line issue is that for millions of girls who are out of school and for millions of children, for that matter, the real reason is poverty. It's family poverty. It's that they do not have the resources that they require to be able to go to school and stay in school. because most of the children across the world, they pay school-going costs to go to school. And this includes such basics like a pen, a pencil, sanitary wear, decent shoes, meals when they are at school. So it's not payment for something that's out of this world. It's payment for basics. When you are in a context where one week supply of menstrual products is equal to 20 meals, there is not so much of a choice.

10:55And that's what we do at Comfort, to say, what do girls need to be able to enroll, to be able to stay in school and succeed? And at the core of it is the resources. So we get girls into school. We help them to learn. So to date, Comfort has supported over 7 million children to go to school. But we have got an alumni network, the Comfort Association Network, where girls have been supported through school by Comfort, join forces with the organization and say, we're going to support the next generation. And on average, each of them supports at least three other girls to go to school from their own financial resources.

11:30So this is what we call the multiplier effect. You get girls into school today, three more will graduate, and it continues like that. You have this beautiful and really powerful short film that the organization made that features the story of one of your colleagues, Lydia Wilbard. Basically, she is showing how after she makes it out of school, after she's graduated, then she has this network of people and this network of people can support her, but she can also support them. Absolutely. And the film is called Tunayunwana, which means together we are. And it simply talks to that collective. And Lydia's story is amazing.

12:06She's now the executive director, Learning and Engagement in Camford. She lost her mother when she was just 10. And so she talks about how the community just came together and provided with the opportunity to keep hold of her education. And what she's doing now is phenomenal. That is one of the fundamental things for me, even personally, that I realized that at times we underestimate the value of something as simple as a pen or a pair of shoes or a decent dress in helping somebody keep their hold on education. So I'll probably just give you one example from my life, particularly for me, it's my form to teacher.

12:44And that's at the point when comfort came into my life and was supporting me through school. So they provided all the financial support that I needed. But going into school and thinking about everybody else had been left behind. There was almost a survivor's guilt about that. You know, where you say, where am I? And what if I fail? What will happen to me? And all of that. And I remember my class teacher just walking in the classroom that I had had weeks of not eating, of struggling, of crying. And he just said in the class, some of you are scholarship children and you're struggling in this class.

13:16I just want you to know when I get in this classroom, I see students. I don't see students we have and students who don't. And when I start teaching you, I don't come to you and I say to those who have got this is what I'm going to say to those who don't or to those who are scholarship. I look at you and I see students. And I also want you to know that for those who are coming from struggling backgrounds, you have got an opportunity to break that cycle. So you use it wisely. I tell you, for me, that was game changing. You wasn't saying it directly to me. You were saying it to everybody in the class.

13:45But for me, that was a turning point. Because here I was, I'd got an opportunity, but I couldn't accept that this was an opportunity for me. This was me. I was trapped in, what if I fail now with this opportunity? But what about my friends were equally good. We also didn't get this chance. So just talking about supporting others. I know personally, and so does a lot of my sisters in the comfort association, what it means to get a chance, what it means to get in the classroom in an exam and wait for everybody to finish or for others to finish. So they give you their pen so you can also write your exam.

14:20So if things like that, that matter, and we should never underestimate the answer that we are in others' life. Yeah, I'm so glad that you brought this up because this is one of the quotes from one of your TED Talks that I wanted to talk about is this idea that when we give someone the opportunity, we also are creating a burden on that person. The idea that they have to be perfect. They have to make every use of this opportunity. They have to have saved their family and their community with their achievements. And you talked in the TED Talk about lifting the burden that each girl has to do it on her own.

14:52This is something that I feel very passionately about, about Chris, that, and I come from a culture where there's a lot of collective. It's got its pros and cons. But particularly when we talk about support circles, some call it tribe, some call it village, some call it kin, some call it group, whatever. However, it's important for us to be human enough to realize we are human, to realize that when you get an opportunity or when you have a chance to do something, you are not alone. It's not a trap, right? Show up in the best way that you can. That's all that matters. And it's okay. But at the same time, we also need to extend each other the same grace and realize that even when I get an opportunity, there's a lot of things that's happening personally as I process that opportunity, even individually.

15:43And this is true for everybody. I'm a CEO now, and I see that with fellow CEOs who are trying to do magic on their own and trying to be infallible. I know everything. I do everything. I also saw that even for me when I was a scholarship child, I see that it's not a weakness. It's a strength to have a support system and to build a support system and to say, I'm overwhelmed. For girls who are coming from a poor background, for boys, for anybody who is coming from there, when you get an opportunity, it's very easy for people to think now your problem is solved. But it's important to understand not just that there is a time survivor's guilt, but at times there's overwhelm because this is a world you don't know, a world you don't understand.

16:29At times we discover that even the schools that are supposed to accommodate students don't know what to do with these girls because they've never had girls like this in the school. So how do we show up and support? I have to go for a job interview, even how to dress for a job interview. It's not uncommon for girls to lend each other a dress and say, you're going for an interview. You can come. I will help you with this. And at times even for some humane things like I've got a sick auntie at hospital who shows up with me to be able to carry that burden. When you talk about success, it's how do we acknowledge those that also hold us in place?

17:04And how do we reach out for support? And how do we show up for others? I think that there is a really problematic and troubling idea sometimes in the United States and in Europe that like Africa has African problems and that they're not the same problems as the rest of the world. And really, everything that you're saying here is applicable to almost anywhere that people live. In the U.S., I know from having taught in an elementary school that sometimes one of the biggest things that you can do to help students show up for class and not miss days of school is make sure that they have clean clothes, is make sure that they have the backpack or the school supplies, the things that are invisible and that people maybe are embarrassed about or feel shame about.

17:49And that is preventing them from accessing education. I think this is one of the reasons why I think that many people are drawn to your personal biography is because there is something so remarkable about this organization helped you to get to go to school. And now you are the CEO of the organization. So I'm the CEO for comfort, but there are 278 ,000 young women with better, even more powerful stories who can talk to you about just how the power of education has transformed their lives. I can talk to you about Naomi, who is leading Climate Smart Initiative in Zambia. I can talk to you about Rinyararu, who was the first medical doctor.

18:26Or Fiona, who used to sell vegetables as a vendor at the market and was our very first lawyer in the network. But just to your point around access, around inequality, and around just making sure that we talk about lost potential as well. This is so real and it's universal. And I want to add to that mix issues of role models. that it helps to see people like you. We have come through and survived and done what they've done. For most of the comfort-supported girls and young women, we're the first generation to have gone through and completed secondary school. Because we come from the most marginalized backgrounds, it's less than 9 % of girls from those communities complete secondary school.

19:10It's one of those things that drives me in my role now is to know that with the right resources, with the right support, with the right opportunity, there is no end to what individuals could do. When I was selected through school to go for comfort support, within my class, we were around 38 girls. In that particular class, I was the only one selected to get support. And of course, I supported as 21, but from different schools. From my class, there were girls I used to compete with academically. When I was not the first, they were the first. So they were amazing in class and they were coming from equally difficult backgrounds.

19:50And I think we need to keep it in mind that opportunities make a huge difference in how life evolves and where people end up. I can't underestimate that. And I see that every single day. That's why I'm intoxicated with what we do at Comfort. I have the privilege of witnessing the transformation every day. But I think that most of us would agree, or at least I would agree, and I know you would, that the ideal would be that you don't have to be the exceptional one to have access to opportunities. The ideal would be that everyone has access to opportunities. You don't have to be the top scorer on one test.

20:30That does seem like a big piece of what CAMFED is working for, is that you don't have to basically win the proverbial lottery to access your full potential is that you can just be a kid. I don't know how many people underestimate that gift to just be a kid. My kids think I didn't go to school because I don't know a lot of the kids games that they do now. And a lot of the nursery rhymes and all of that, it was something that we could not afford. I was working through my childhood to be able to compensate for, is it an excise book? Is it a pen? So there was no luxury of wearing and doing this. So just to be a kid is a gift.

21:09It's a special privilege that a lot of children who come from marginalized communities don't have. For me, when we talk about justice in and through education and opportunity is if everybody got this opportunity, how far could they go? What is the opportunity cost of not investing in education? Just very quickly, for me, one of the very painful things that I grapple with all the time is, you know, when there are limited resources is when you come and you say we will support these five girls or these hundred girls or these thousand girls it's not like those that are 10 now that we are not selecting will be locked at that age until they get the opportunity they are already lost they are lost they're growing older without it so that for me is the pain because i have seen what exclusion does and I've seen what inclusion does.

21:59And that's where my heart breaks every time.

22:06We're going to take a quick break, but we will be right back with more from Angie in just a moment.

22:23The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring? on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead, no rigid long-term contracts, just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. In today's fast-changing digital world, proving your company is trustworthy isn't just important for growth, it's essential. That's why Vanta is here.

23:01Vanta helps companies of all sizes get compliant fast and stay that way, with industry-leading AI, automation, and continuous monitoring. So whether you're a startup tackling your first SOC 2 or ISO 27001, or an enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta's trust management platform makes it quicker, easier, and more scalable. Vanta also helps you complete security questionnaires up to five times faster, so you can win bigger deals sooner. The results? According to a recent IDC study, Vanta customers slash over$500 ,000 a year in costs and are three times more productive. Establishing trust isn't optional.

23:38Vanta makes it automatic. 10 ,000 global companies trust Vanta, including Atlassian, Cura, Chili Piper, and Factory. Visit vanta.com slash TED Audio to sign up for a free demo today. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash TED Audio. If all you know about climate change is doom and gloom, you've got it wrong. Speed and Scale is a new podcast from the TED Audio Collective that brings stories that show a path forward for our planet. We, Ryan and Anjali, interview experts on solutions that go beyond paper straws or rinsing your recyclables. We're sharing real-life measurable actions that industries and governments and people with real power to solve the climate crisis can use today.

24:18Listen to Speed and Scale wherever you get your podcasts.

24:47Howard Woodward. And so I'll tell you what my last daughter just said. She's 11. So she said to me this other day, so she'd come in and she said, I want to join hockey, netball, guitar, music, like everything. And I want to join the band club and drama club and text to this where also school trips and stuff like that. So I said to her, I think we need to talk about this. This is a lot. and I'm concerned it will interfere with your school life. But she was quiet and just said to me, actually, did it ever okay to you that school is interfering with my enjoyment of life like this? So I tell you, I had to check myself because this is where I think, Chris, the difference is.

25:37For me, school was survivor. It was the only ticket out of the situation that we were in to the point that you're obsessed with your studies that you can't even enjoy it because you don't want to fail. You don't want to make a mistake. So even now you go outside the school system and they talk to you about, they call them soft skills, to be honest, there's nothing soft about it. They talk to you about interactions, about social life. Those are things that we just didn't have the luxury to do. I remember the school that we went to. You'd go to sports and the whole group would be looking at study cards, checking group words, because you're just afraid this will slip.

26:18My kids don't approach school with the same. We have to remind each other to really focus on school. They understand it, but they enjoy it. Let me use that word. They enjoy it. I was grateful for it. It was a privilege, but it was do or die. And just talking about exposure as well. it helps to be able to understand how other people live for me life was my village it's all that i knew it's all that i see all these other careers that i started hearing about much later in life we didn't know them we didn't understand them we couldn't even comprehend them and that for me is very handicapping it's unfair so one of my colleagues eliza talked about this just one of the first girls to go to uni from a village she's from malawi we supported here to be able to get her on the bus and there was somebody who was waiting for her in the capital to pick her from the bus and walk her to go to the college.

27:14One of the exposure issues that she talks about that touches me was she said, you know, like students are with just and all of that. The student said to her, oh, you need to go and rub the board. Now that the lecture has ended, you need to rub the board. But it was a projector. She had never seen a projector and she had never seen any. So she said, I picked up the duster and I went to the wall and I saw all these letters coming on my hand and everybody was laughing. She said, I went back and I said, I don't want to go to school anymore. I don't want to be here. And she said, anyway, fortunately the lecturer then said to her, this is the reason why you need to be here and you need to fight.

27:51She ended up being the student president for that class and all of that. But I'm just saying exposure matters. Even for some of the things that you think are so basic exposure matters and for us with comfort association the young women that are supported through school we go back to the village and try and expose others to it but we also know when somebody's coming to university in the capital when somebody's coming for a job in the capital these are some of the normal things that will shock us so we have got a very gentle process of transition and say this is what this looks like this is where you go for This is what you need to know.

28:28But at the same time, still retaining somebody's dignity as they get the exposure they need. And that sense of belonging is so important to feeling like you can make it in a new place, right? That matters so much. There have to be trailblazers, but the trailblazers have to also tell others. And to be honest, be vulnerable about it. The beauty for me from just our network from comfort is that girls and young women and, of course, champions and stakeholders have gone through this. are okay with being vulnerable and sharing their Eureka moments and saying, this is what I learned and how I learned it.

29:01But the other reason I think that many people are struck by you being the CEO of CAMFED is that it is so common to see large organizations that work in Africa or in countries that have fewer resources than Western countries to be run by a person who is not from that country, a person who hasn't had the lived experience. Sometimes that can be great and it can be it can actually make great work. But often it can be people who come with their idea of what is needed, which is maybe not what is actually needed by the people who are on the ground. Yeah, I've heard a lot about localization, about experience, about lived experience, and it's all easy to talk about it.

29:45It's another thing to actually do it and enforce it. And I just want to be able to say at Comfort, we do our best in that. And we keep learning and we keep adjusting. But also we are very strategic and proactive about ensuring how do we bring those with lived experience, those with expertise. What do we need to ensure that the girls that we support have got it better? You have got it the easiest, fastest way. You have got it the most comprehensive way. For us, it's our accountability to the girls and young women for whom we are set up. And that's at the core of what we do. So I just wanted to make sure that for us as an audience, we're very holistic about it.

30:26It's how do we do better? How do we do this at scale? And lived experience matters in a big way. For us, we talk about accompaniment through school. So we have got guys, young women who go back to their former schools, trained and supported in everything to be able to accompany others through completion. and the same thing applies at university, on starting businesses, on in the business industry and all of that. It's just we know the power of accompaniment and this is where lived experience matters because there are some barriers that are very subtle and very hidden and there are people that are not seen even as we try and do everything that we...

31:03So I'm just saying to you that I'm glad that as an organization, we are very deliberate about lived experience. Because by the end of the day, people know what they want and they know where they want to go. And they've got huge, amazing, audacious ambitions for their children. We should never confuse lack of resources for lack of ambition and for lack of understanding of what it takes. Chris, if you come to me today and you say to me, Angie, I'm going to send your son or your daughter to school and I'm going to tell you how to do it and everything. That's condescending. And even for development partners, need to think like that.

31:42You just can't come because you've got the resources. You can't come and just run down everybody. By the end of the day, we need to respect people's agency and respect people's right over themselves and see how we support them, how we complement their journey as opposed to hijacking it. So what are some ways that people can be involved either with CAMFED directly or with taking these lessons and putting them into place in their own communities? So first and foremost, let's all start from a place of understanding and empathy. Let's make sure we show up in other people's lives respectfully. So for me, as much as people could be deliberate about wanting to learn more about not just Africa, but about disadvantage, about barriers and about people's aspirations and all of that, as much as you can understand about education, agency and all of that would be great.

32:36Second and foremost, which is another thing, we still have millions of children that are school is please support financially for children to go to school. It costs$150 to support a girl through secondary school for a year. So that's one very practical thing. You can go to our website, look into those that support education and see this is how I can support somebody in Africa to go to school. And for those across Africa and of course, everywhere else, check those who are not in school around your neighborhood, find out how and see how you can support them because that's a game changer. It's transformative.

33:07Just a final thing, please show up for each other. I love that we show up for each other in the Sisterhood of Comfort Association. Let's show up for each other. Let's approach each other with empathy, with kindness. It's a tough world out there, right? But we can do better by just being more empathetic and giving each other a listening eye and lending a hand as much as we can. In Africa, we say, you know, in Swahili, which means together we can. Stories of individual heroes are exciting and fascinating. But they're not the fabric on which the world is built. What are other lessons that you've learned through CAMFED that people can replicate in their work?

33:49What would be their kind of first steps to building a community of support and to making sure that they take the needs of people and not condescend to them into account? Listen, option one, listen with respect, right? respect others as you would want them to respect you. If there is something that's going on in somebody's life or you feel like this person could do better, or why are they like, listen, give them an ear, listen and listen without judgment. You will learn a lot more things than you think you know for them and ask them how you can help. The solution might not be what you think they need, but they know what they need.

34:29And if you would want to explore that with respect, and I know this is tough to do, But a lot of people say, get into somebody's shoes. Get into their shoes and understand. We have had mothers where people are going to say, why are you not paying your child school fees? And some of the mothers say, can you even check if we ate last night? So listen, empathize and show up and ask them how you can come in into their world. Don't just budge in and allow people the grace to also follow their course. Understand that people might be going through more than they tell you. And there's this proverb that you brought up in one of your TED Talks.

35:06Those who harvest many pumpkins often do not have the clay pots to cook them in. Can you tell me about what that means and the context that you brought it up in? Because I feel like it's very relevant to what we're talking about right now. In my local language, they say mananganu wirakunewasnahari. That's the Shona translation if it is a picture of us. Mananganu wirakunewasnahari. so in English those that harvest many pumpkins often do not have the clay pots to cook them in and this was said to me when I was how old was I like 11 12 I was a star student doing very well in school but somebody said it to me because they were like saying you know what it's such a shame that with all this talent and this potential that this is all going to waste you don't have money to go to the next stage, what will happen to you?

35:58It was very true. I knew that there was no next option. But because somebody decided to give my parents the clay pots and all of that, look where I am now. So in other words, we all just need to realize that there's so much latent undiscovered potential in people. And if we show up and support them, we'll be surprised at how many other more pumpkins we could harvest. I love that. One thing we haven't really talked about in this conversation, but that I know is a really big focus of your work recently and that you're really passionate about is climate change and climate education. Because educating girls and empowering women, it's not just about creating sisterhood.

36:40It's not just about creating economic opportunity and development. It's also one of the most effective ways to deal with climate change, which I think people don't always think about. So I'm talking to you right now when there is a severe drought across sub-Saharan Africa, because a lot of people depend on the land, on farming, for food, for income, for everything. This is a huge impact for them in terms of what happens next. And what we know is whenever there are climate shocks, be they cyclones, be they earthquakes, be they droughts, be they floods, which unfortunately are happening in more frequency across the world anyway.

37:25Girls are often the first to be pushed out of school. So it's either because there's hunger or actually the place where you get your water, the wells or the bowls are fed away. So you're spending more and more time looking for basics like water, looking for basics like firewood for the fire. So girls often live in the first hour of school to be able to look for part-time work to sustain their families. And there's also the threat of early marriage and early pregnancy as people look at coping mechanisms. At times it's one less mouth to feed, but at times it's I could join maybe that family. They seem to have more food.

38:02So I'll just go and get married there. And it's a painful decision for a girl because the ambition is to become a doctor, not to become a teen bride. But also we know that with climate shocks and all of that, at times schools have to close because they're used as rescue centers. At times rivers are flooding so students can't go to school. So I talked about a lot of the problems, right? The solution, we know that girls who go to school, girls who get a secondary education will have smaller families. they will be able to cope and understand climate in a better way they are more resilient can bounce back and for us as an organization what we are also doing is ensuring that climate education gets into the classroom early so in zimbabwe zambia and tanzania we now have a climate smart education curriculum embedded in the school so that people understand what's going on in the world and in the village people will see that they've lace water the rivers that use not to dry up are drying up or areas that use not to flood are flooding.

39:05That's what they see. But the science behind it, all the issues. So what do we do with it? That's what we are bringing into the classroom to be able to make sure that students can cope, but also at the same time to ensure that even in crisis like that, education is still prioritized. Let me just end with kind of a mindset thing, which is that a lot of these issues that you deal with, that you work on, these are hard, heavy issues. So how do you think about like laughter and joy and humor as being a part of this work? We don't do pity parties, Chris. We don't do pity parties. We always say we work very hard and we have so much fun.

39:41So if you see us, we are singing, we are dancing, we are laughing through our tears because by the end of the day, every day, every moment, we making life better than we found it. I am so grateful to get to talk to you and to have had this conversation. I really, I can't thank you enough. Angie, it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the show and thank you for all the work that you do. Thanks for having me, Chris. I appreciate it.

40:12That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, the incredible Angie Murray-Mirwa. Her organization is called CAMFED and you can find out more at CAMFED.org. That's C-A-M-F-E-D dot org. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects, at ChrisDuffyComedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by a group of people constantly reminding me that we do not throw pity parties, and even if we did, they would not involve cake. Those people are Daniela Balorezzo, Ban Ban Cheng, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Lainey Lott, Antonia Leigh, and Joseph DeBrine.

40:49This episode was fact-checked in a highly educated manner by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas. On the PRX side, we've got a team of A-plus students in the craft of audio. Thank you to Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Maggie Gorville, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. And of course, thanks to you for listening to our show. None of this would be possible without you. A podcast is not a podcast without listeners. If you are listening on Apple, please leave us a five-star rating and review. and regardless of where you're listening, share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it. Send them a text or an email.

41:21Say, hey, I thought you would like this or just show up at their house and put your headphones on them and force them to listen. Actually, don't do that. That one sounds creepy. Whatever you do, we will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate you and take care.