World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick, Launch of the Adolescent Girls Initiative

Event held on the sidelines of the IMF/WB Annual Meetings 2008

Remarks by

Robert B. Zoellick, World Bank Group President, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, World Bank Managing Director, Danny Leipziger, World Bank Vice President and Head of PREM,  Mark Parker, CEO, Nike, Inc., Angelique Kidjo, Grammy Award-winning Beninese Singer and Founder of the Batonga Foundation, Liya Kebede, Supermodel & Founder of Liya Kebede Foundation, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia, Ulla Tornaes, Minister for Development Cooperation, Denmark, Haakon Gulbrandsen, State Secretary for International Development, Norway,  Martin Dinham, Director General International, DFID, Joakim Stymne, State Secretary for International Development Cooperation, Sweden, Cherie Blair, Founder of the Cherie Blair Women’s Foundation, Dina Powell, Managing Director & Head of Corporate Engagement, Goldman Sachs, Paila Danal, Americas Head for Public Affairs, Standard Chartered, Inc., Diana Bracco, President of the EXPO Milano 2015 Foundation, Litizia Moratti, Mayor of Milan & Commissioner for Expo Milano 2015, and adolescent girls Ms. Phennapha Phommachanh (Laos), Ms. Ana Louisa Cholotio (Guatemala) and Ms. Joyce Kollie (Liberia).

Friday, October 10, 2008

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: I want to welcome you to this exciting event, the launch of the Adolescent Girls Initiative. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, in the midst of this talk of the financial crisis, it’s wonderful to be focusing on something concrete, something real, something different, the reason why we’re all involved in development – the support of the wonderful girls and young women we see, some of whom are represented here in the room today. Let me tell you right away that for the World Bank, this is an innovative initiative. We are joining forces with the private sector and governments in a new way. Our common and specific goal is to help adolescent girls and young women to improve their livelihoods and embark on opportunities to achieve their potential. The initiative we’re launching today targets adolescent girls in low-income and post-conflict developing countries. We do this also because of the girls' abilities to bring economic and social change to their families, their communities, and their countries. I’m delighted to welcome the President of the World Bank, Bob Zoellick. Bob has been a formidable champion for gender and development in the World Bank. The six new commitments he made on behalf of the Bank in April were groundbreaking. He made them as he was officially made a champion of the Third Millennium Development Goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Incidentally, at the commitment ceremony, Bob was given an MDG torch. I can report that his gender equality torch is displayed prominently in his office.

I’d like to acknowledge our partners in this initiative, the governments of Australia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, who are supporting us in this pilot phase. Welcome to Ulla P. Tornaes, the Minister for Development Cooperation of Denmark. Welcome to Sir Joakim Stymne, State Secretary for International Development of Sweden, to Haakon Gulbrandsen State Secretary for International Development of Norway, to Martin Dinham, Director General of the Department for International Development of the UK.

Let me say that it has been especially encouraging to see the private sector invest in young women’s economic opportunity. I’m delighted to welcome Mark Parker, the CEO of Nike Corporation, and Maria Eitel, the President of Nike Foundation. Welcome and thanks for being such strong partners. The Adolescent Girls Initiative builds on the work that Nike Foundation, the Government of Liberia and the World Bank started in Liberia. I would like to recognize the inspiring work done by Goldman Sachs and by Standard Chartered Bank. I’m happy that Dina Powell and Paila Danal are here with us today. I’m delighted to extend also a special welcome to Cherie Blair, whose Women’s Foundation is already doing important things for women and girls in countries like Afghanistan, to the Mayor of Milan, Ms. Litizia  Moratti, who has just launched a new foundation for Africa and joins us by video, and Diana Bracco, who is representing her today. Welcome to Hilda Johnson, Deputy Executive Director for UNICEF. I don’t know if Hilda is here yet. We’re also grateful that CISCO has joined us as a partner. Welcome to their Excellencies, Ambassadors of Nepal, Denmark, Liberia, the ambassadors of their countries in the United States. Thank you all for being here.

Girls can have big dreams today because of the next two people I’m going to introduce. They have broken into [background whispering blocking speaker] her fantastic music, and we have every intention of trying to get her to sing or do something for us today that will make our bodies move. What some may not know is that Angelique has also started a foundation to help girls in Africa get a secondary and higher education, the Batonga Foundation. I’m grateful, Angelique, that you could join us on such short notice. My guess is that Liya Kebede, the next person I’m going to talk about, is more accustomed to the catwalks of Paris and Milan than to World Bank conference rooms. But outside the world of super modeling she has been an absolute champion of daughters and mothers in developing countries everywhere, so I’m especially pleased that Liya took the time to be with us today. Finally, before I hand over to Bob Zoellick, I would like to welcome the most important people in the room today, the girls from the developing countries. Will you stand up for us, please? Thank you, thank you, please sit down, thank you. You will see today that these girls who have come here to tell us their story, like their peers, are courageous, energetic, industrious and possess tremendous potential to contribute to the development of their families, their communities, and to the economic growth to their countries. Many thanks go to Vital Voices and Alyse, I don’t know where you are, Alyse, hi, for arranging to bring the girls here and for collaborating so strongly with us in this initiative. Thank you all here present today for joining us in a wonderful launch of something vital and important to all of us. Now it’s my absolute pleasure to invite Bob Zoellick, a true believer in women and in girls, thank you.

MR. ZOELLICK: Well, thank you very much, Ngozi, and let me recognize for all of you as well your tremendous passion and commitment to the issue of gender equality and for all your tremendous work for this great initiative. Just to share a little story with you. Ngozi told me earlier this week that she had to take a quick trip up to Cambridge. Massachusetts. because her daughter was having her oral exam on her PhD’s, and when I asked Ngozi when she came back what this proud mother's daughter had done, it was a project that, just like her mother, reflected some extraordinary scholarship, but also some very practical ways of helping people. So, she demonstrates the leadership in every aspect of her life, and we’re really delighted to have her as a partner and as a leader here at the Bank.

Now, as all of you know, there’s a few things going on in the world these days, but I really wanted to be here for the exact reason that Ngozi mentioned, which is, at a earlier session I had today with the G-24 developing countries, we were talking about the crisis, we were talking about the effects on the poorer countries of the world, but both Trevor Manuel of South Africa and I emphasized that it’s at moments like these that, while you are working on today’s problem, you have to be able to look ahead. You have to plant the seeds for the future, and what you’re here doing today is one of those most important seeds. So I really want to thank each and every one of you from the girls to the companies that have been involved with this project to the people who put it together. All of us know these take a tremendous effort, we know there’s a lot to go, but this really is a fantastic initiative, and we’re very delighted to be part of launching the Adolescent Girls Initiative as part of our larger program for gender equality at the Bank.

As Ngozi said, with the leadership of Minister Ulla Tornaes of Denmark, we’ve made our own six gender commitments to try to support the efforts to achieve the Third Millennium Development Goal, and as Ngozi also said, we take these very seriously. So we appreciate the role that you’ve played about organizing people all around the world, Ulla, we’ll do our part, keep an eye on us in case you think that we’re slipping, but you can see some of the people at the table who’ve really done a laboring over it making this happen.

I was going to make actually some more informal remarks, but as I kind of looked at my notes, I realized there’s a tremendous story to tell. So just stay with me a little bit, because I think what really drives this initiative most of all is the issue of women’s empowerment being one of, first off, fairness and decency. Girls should have the same opportunities as boys to lead full and productive lives. Some of the research we’ve done has emphasized that this is also a question of smart economics. Studies show that investment in girls and women yield very large economic and social returns. Now in only a few decades, health and education levels of girls and women have improved significantly, but economic opportunity has not. Women consistently trail behind men in labor force participation, access to credit, entrepreneurship, inheritance and ownership rights and in the income they generate, and this is neither fair nor smart economics.

So today we’re focusing on one part of this issue, the special benefits of investing in adolescent girls. This is important because of the benefits it generates for the young women themselves, but also for their households and for their economies. It’s also important because adolescent girls' well-being has direct implications for the families and the communities of tomorrow. Investing in young women is one way to break the intergenerational pattern of poverty.

Today there are about one and a half billion, 12- to 24-year-olds worldwide; 9 out of 10 of them live in developing countries, the most ever in history. Investing in this generation of economic and social actors, boys and girls, is critical, and by doing so we’re going to be investing in the generations that follow. Today, adolescent girls in low-income countries are on average much better educated than they were 20 years ago, but they remain far behind boys on the issues of transition from school to work, and girls in poorer households, not surprising, trail the most. In places where young women have started joining the work force in larger numbers, like we’ve seen in Bangladesh, studies show that the opportunity cost of stopping work was high enough for them to delay marriage and childbirth. Thank you. This effect can be very important for the well being of young women, but also for their children and their households and their communities, because as young women grow to become mothers, their well-being is especially important for the intergenerational transmission.

For example, we now know the link between a mother’s education and her children’s schooling is very strong. In Brazil, the probability of a child surviving increases by about 20 percent when household income is in the hands of the mother. In Kenya, children in households where income is managed by mothers are 17 percent taller than children in households where income is managed by fathers.

Therefore, we’re very proud to be able to launch this new initiative under the World Bank Group's Gender Action Plan. We hope this will help smooth the transition for adolescent girls to productive adulthood in some of the poorest countries, and including in the most fragile states, and I was so delighted when I learned about the early efforts of this in Liberia. I had a chance to visit Liberia earlier in the year. All of you have probably known from what you’ve read and seen, this is a country that just went through incredible trauma over the course of decades. We have an amazing President in President Johnson-Sirleaf. She’s not only a very good economist and person that understands the policy aspects but she’s a fantastic leader. I went out with her to visit some of the community programs she does, and it was an amazing opportunity to see her introduce her Cabinet team, take questions from the audience, and then really build something for Liberia that had been so shattered, it’s amazing you can pull it back together, which is the patriotism, the sense of national purpose of the country. So it’s absolutely wonderful that this program has been starting not only in poor countries but countries that fall in this devastating category of trying to come out of conflict. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s also going to be smart economics. So in the pilot phase of this program, we’re trying to bring projects for adolescent girls to six post-conflict countries. So, so far, we’ve got work moving ahead with Afghanistan, Liberia, I learned this morning Nepal, Rwanda and Southern Sudan. So I hope later we can replicate the effort in so many other countries, and we urge the partners here to join hands with us.

Now the spark for this was – the Adolescent Girls Initiative –was a project that we started in Liberia in partnership with the Nike Foundation. This is a wonderful opportunity for me, as I mentioned to Mark, since I’m an old and now slightly coughing runner, but years ago I turned to Nike and have got my old established product in the line that I use. So I’m so delighted that Nike has emphasized this as a core activity, and I couldn’t think of a better one. So in addition to recognizing the path-making role that President Johnson-Sirleaf did, I also want to thank Nike CEO Mark Parker for his excellent cooperation and designing and launching this project and your foundation team. I think everybody in room knows, to actually make something like this happen and the come together, there’s countless hours, things that don’t quite come together the way that you would normally want them to do, and frankly this is what makes development work in the aspect that we do really meaningful when you can see something like this and you can see the effect that it has on young girls and boys around the world. So thanks to all of you for your partnership, thanks for all that you do, thank you, Ngozi, again and thanks for all of you for coming and being part of this.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: Thank you, Bob, and now we’re going to hear from Mark Parker, the CEO of Nike.

MR. PARKER: First of all, thank you, Bob, for your very kind words of introduction, and I want to thank everyone here for coming to this very special meeting today. I know how valuable your time is, and I can assure you that today will be a very wise use of your time. So I do have some remarks I’d like to share with you all. First of all, I’m going to state the obvious, and that is poverty is a global crisis. Its effects are tragic and, I believe, unnecessary, and I’m here in front of you to offer my personal commitment to this cause, Nike’s support, and ask for yours. As CEO of Nike, I have seen over and over again that Nike is successful because we believe in the power of human potential. That’s the business that we’re in. We exist to give innovation and inspiration they need, people, to achieve their potential. We don’t create that potential in people, we recognize it, we value it, and we enable it. I believe that requires three things: a clear understanding of the need, an innovated and committed team, and a complete focus on leveraging and targeting our resources. That’s how Nike strives to serve human potential.

Our greatest resources overall in breaking this cycle of poverty is the adolescent girl. That’s why the Nike Foundation focused on this very important issue. We know when the adolescent girl is given the basic tools that safe places, supportive communities and economic opportunity, she brings stability to her family and economic vigor to her community. She is the source of prosperity and promise for everyone around her. At the Nike Foundation, we call this the girl effect. Yet it’s a sad irony that she is amongst the world’s most undervalued resource, and there’s many reasons for this. One of the most powerful is simple economics. When she’s born, the family sees her as a bad investment, an economic burden. That’s why it’s so easy to pull her out of school the minute her family needs her. In rural villages, that’s why she carries the water, collects firewood, and does the chores. That’s when education and opportunity begin to slip away. Then when she’s 12 or 14, she’s traded in marriage for cows or electrical appliances. Of course, these families love and care for their daughters, but it’s also another mouth to feed, one that the family cannot afford. These are the harsh economic conditions that force her family to make such devastating decisions.

In urban centers, the downward spiral accelerates, she leverages the only asset she has, her body, and enters the world of transactional sex and all the violence and disease that comes with it. That’s why economics is at the center of the Adolescent Girls Initiative. Education is critical, reproductive rights are critical, but just as young girls are the most powerful agents of change, we believe that access to economic opportunity is the most powerful enabler of growth and prosperity.

We’re launching this strategy here with you right now. The Nike Foundation is committing three million dollars, and the nation of Denmark is committing two million dollars. Of course, it’s not enough, but it’s enough to get started. We’re combining these funds with the infrastructure and technical support of the World Bank. Together we’re working with President Johnson-Sirleaf to bring the Adolescent Girls Initiative to Liberia. I’m personally very confident in the energy and the return on investment this strategy will create. We’re building a bridge between relevant training and real jobs that actually help drive the economy. When a young girl crosses that bridge, we all benefit, everybody wins.

Today is a historic day if we choose to make it so. I believe this is true of all great achievements; they are matters of choice and a lot of hard work. Today is about Liberia, and thanks to a number of you, Afghanistan, Rwanda and Southern Sudan. Tomorrow’s about taking everything we learned there and investing more in young girls in more countries. But to do that requires the ongoing cooperation of everyone in this room along with people in donor countries, in site countries, across the World Bank, and private foundations. Everyone has the potential to help; everyone has a role to play.

I want to close with a short video we put together at the Nike Foundation, and I’ll tell you it’s not a definition of the issues. I think you all know how complex and challenging this work is. Instead it’s a celebration of the potential of young girls. I think Nike’s pretty good at communicating and inspiring people. That’s one of the resources we bring to this effort to increase awareness and participation. I believe the real power of this video is in its simplicity. For obvious reasons, we call it the girl effect, and with that I want to thank you for your time and I look forward to working with all of you in the future. Thank you.

NIKE VIDEO: The World Is a mess. Poverty. Aids. Hunger. War. So what else is new. What if there was an unexpected solution that could turn this sinking ship around? Would you even know it if you saw it? It's not the Internet. It's not science. It's not the government. It's not money. (dramatic pause). It's (dramatic pause) a girl. Imagine a girl living in poverty. No, go ahead, really, imagine her. Girl. Baby. Husband. Hunger. HIV. Now, pretend that you can fix that picture. Okay. Now she has a chance. Let's put here in a school uniform and see her get a loan to buy a cow and use the profits from the milk to help her family. Pretty soon, here cow becomes a herd. And she becomes the business owner who brings clean water and to the village, which makes the men respect her good sense and invite to the village council where she convinces everyone that all girls are valuable. Soon, more girls have a chance, and the village is thriving. Healthier babies. Peace. Lower HIV. Food. Education. Commerce. Sanitation. Stability. Which means the economy of the entire country improves and the whole world is better off. Are you following what's happening here? Girl > School >Cows > $ > Business >Clean H2O >Social Change >Stronger Economy > Better World. It's called the girl effect. Multiply that by 600 million girls in the developing world, and you just changed the course of history. The girl effect. Invest in a girl and she will do the rest. [end Nike video]

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you, Mark, for that, not only the talk but the wonderful video. Now I’d like to call on my friend, Angelique Kidjo, to give us some words and some songs, if she likes.

MS. KIDJO: Good morning everybody. Everything has been said by Ngozi, Mr. Zoellick, and Mr. Parker, but as an African woman, I was a young girl before, and I’ll start telling my story. I was born in a family of 10 kids. My father was the only one with an income, my mother was home. My mother was educated, and my father was educated, and both of them made sure that all the 10 children that they have goes to school. My father always said, there is no negotiation between you singing and going to school; you don’t go to school, you don’t sing – period, and that’s the way it is. And all of us, sports or music, because in my family we had a lot sports people. My brother was the champion of table tennis and the captain of the national team. I ran 1500 meters as an adolescent because I was in a national team of running in Benin and my sister was basket, tennis, you name it. So my father believed that sports and music help us learn better in school and keep us away from trouble. And they decided also that our house was going to be an open house of discussion that would, there was never going to be a taboo subject in the house, because if we don’t tell them for them to find a solution for us, we’ll take the wrong decision and we’ll jeopardize our life. They say their job as parents were not to dictate our life, but to be the strong word on which we can lean on any time we have any problem for us to find the comfort, the love and the counseling that we need. Because of my parents and also because of the fact that my mother was a health freak, I will call it, I got scared every time I saw the vaccination bus of UNICEF coming. I run, I have many places I run and hide and she found all of them, and she would grab me out of it and get me vaccination. I say why you take me all the time, shot that needle in my butt all the time, I don’t need that needle, I’m fine, and my mom said no. If you're sick, you can’t learn in school, and if you're sick, you cannot have any grade, you can’t even think. I’m like, well, why me? Everybody make fun out of me in school, they call me the white girl because I have all my vaccination line up, all those things, nobody does that around. My mother said I don’t care what anybody do in their house, that’s how it goes in my house, I want you to be healthy, and I want you to stay in school as long as possible and have good grade or whatever you decide to do. So after all those examples, my parents have taught me that the world is my background and is my home, and I can do everything I want to do and I can stand tall in the world and compare myself to everybody because I am a human being. That is something that I really built my whole life on. I wanted to be a human rights lawyer at one point, and I realized when I was in the law university that law most of the time don’t serve justice, and I don’t want to be schizophrenic, and I don’t want to walk around very frustrated. So, therefore, I’m going to sing and try to build up a bridge among all human beings on this planet, because I believe that we are all interdependent. If we do not hold hands, you see this? What? First example is this economical crisis, everybody just falling, and no one is there to hold anyone, because profits have come before human being. The human beings are the one that create wealth, not the other way around, and if we don’t change the course of the world by taking that into account, by educating the girls in this world, then we fail. I’ve been campaigning for five years with UNICEF for the MDGs in primary school. I’ve done a lot of PSA, and a lot of mothers in Africa have told me, oh, you again. We’ve seen your face on TV telling us to put our girls to school, our girls to school. Okay, now we are done with the primary school, so what are we going to do for secondary school? I’m all, why you ask me? They say, you are the one we see, you are the one that tell us to send our girls to school. So I’ve come up with a solution, to create a foundation called Batonga Foundation. Batonga is the name of one of my songs, and I created that word when I was in school because we are three girlfriends from different sizes that boys hound and taunt everyday for us to drop out of school. It’s not easy, and on top of that I was singing, I was famous when I was sent to primary school all the way to high school, and they were calling me a prostitute every time I come out of school because I was a singer. So I found a way to get them back off from my back. My father always told me, if you start fighting physically, you have lost every battle because that’s the ultimate solution that we have to defend our self. Use your brain, use your intelligence, use words to get those boys to back off. I say, okay, what am I going to do? So I invent the word called Batonga, which means get off my back. I can be who I want to be, and I can do whatever I want to do, you can haunt me and taunt me as much you want, that ain’t going to work. So I decide to call my foundation Batonga because I want to give wings to the adolescents of Africa to fly and to change Africa. Because of the example of my mother, I know that an educating mother will change my continent. We cannot talk about economical growth, reducing child mortality, HIV and AIDS and all the issues [talking in background] and we met women, we make sure that we spoke to the women because most of. I mean when we arrive the men already lay off everything. They’re sitting down they’re in charge, man. They are the ones that are going to talk I’m like [background talking again]. Once when I was talking to the man, and Ngozi said to the interpreter, don’t translate because I was on their back. So we went to those women, and they gave us all those insights on what happened to them and one thing that they gave us as mission was for us not to portray them as victims, but to do everything in our capacity for security to exist in their country. Then they can go back home and raise their kids in peace and not in the camp scene – the kids going to school in camp – but in their homes, to come back. So that have been said, educating girls in adolescence is absolutely a key to development in Africa. Thank you all here for doing that. As Ngozi said, I gotta sing. Ngozi, you always ask me for those things I don’t plan. All right, I will sing for you a thanking song, because I want to thank everybody for coming tonight and doing everything in our capacity, all together to change this world. [singing 00:32:57-00:34:16]. Thank you.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you, Angelique, for that beautiful ending, and thank you for your wonderful words. Now it’s my honor to call on Liya to say a few words. I forgot to mention that Liya is also a goodwill ambassador for WHO for maternal and child mortality. Thank you, Liya.

MS. KEBEDE: I want to thank, of course, the wonderful Ngozi for bringing me here, and I also want to thank her for not asking me to walk on a catwalk here. Close to half a million women die from pregnancy and/or childbirth-related complications each year. How can it be that every minute one woman, in most cases a girl, dies from a treatable or preventable condition? The answer is simple: women and girls are not prioritized in national and global development agendas. As a result, their sexual and reproductive health is often ignored, overlooked and under-financed. Giving birth, which is often a joyous occasion here in the North, is a death sentence for many women and girls in developing countries, who have no health care, but only prayers to help them through the difficult process. If we want to understand why pregnancy negatively affects so many women and girls in developing countries, we have to begin at the beginning of their lives. The average girl in a developing country is born to an adolescent mother, a mother who never went to school or who had to drop out from elementary school to help with house chores and get married as early as 9 or 10 years old to a person that she’s never met before. One out of seven girls in developing countries marries before age 15, and nearly half of all girls are expected to marry by age 20. An adolescent mother whose first sexual experience will mostly result in an unwanted pregnancy, which will add more burden to their already poor living conditions, an unwanted pregnancy that will likely take her life if she decides not to go through with it. In Ethiopia, where I’m from, more than half of maternal death among women under age 20 were found to be due to unsafe abortions. If she does decide to accept her fate and have this baby, she’s five times more likely to die from complications of pregnancy than women in their twenties and she also puts her baby at high risk of dying. Throughout the nine months [background talking again] she does not receive any kind of prenatal care because she does not know the importance of it or simply because she lives too far away from the nearest clinic. Instead, she continues to work long hours while taking care of her husband and her home. When she’s ready to deliver the baby, there are no skilled providers to give her the care she desperately needs, which means she will likely be one of the half a million women each year who die from simple [background talking] like infection, hemorrhage or obstructed labor. If she does survive the childbirth, she might be one of thousands of women who suffer from obstetric fistula. This means not only has she lost her baby but also now suffers debilitating physical and emotional consequences, where a simple surgical intervention would have saved her baby and given her the relief she needed. These are the circumstances under which our little girl in question is born. Being born from an adolescent mother will likely, she will likely have a low birth weight, which makes her prone to malnutrition and future obstetric complications. Growing up, she’s marginalized with no access to basic health care, income or nutrition, and she’s prone to harmful traditional practices, such as female genital mutilation. While she’s going through the awkward age that we call puberty, she has witnessed several more pregnancies from her mother, who, not having the basic human right to education, continues to be a victim of her circumstance, increasingly risking her life and the lives of her other children with each additional childbirth. An education that she’ll probably deny her daughter because of lack of her own education because of the distance to schools, because of safety or possibility of sexual assault from boys or men while in transit or even inside the classrooms, or simply because the lack of basic toilet facilities that make it harder for girls in puberty to attend school. Instead, the mother prepares her young daughter for an early marriage that got her in the situation in the first place, hence the vicious cycle continues.

Research has shown time and time again that a girl who has been given the chance to an education, especially all the way through secondary school, will be able to contribute to the economic well-being of her family, which means a better life for her and her children. She will know to have only the number of children they can afford to feed and not burden her family situation by having too many children. She will know to get prenatal and postnatal care and deliver in a hospital facility, thus dramatically increasing her chances of being alive and there for her family. She will know to make sure all the children are vaccinated and will take proper hygiene measurements to ensure the health and well-being of her children. She will make sure her children are educated, which will then give them the power to get out of poverty and contribute to the development of their own country. In my role as the WHO goodwill ambassador for maternal newborn and child health, I’ve become deeply committed to improving the lives, the health and well-being of women and children around the world. In 2005, I launched the Liya Kebede Foundation, which raises awareness and funds for maternal and child health in developing countries. The task before us is monumental, but is not impossible, so I ask you to help, but more importantly 625 million adolescent girls living in developing countries ask you to help. Adolescent girls are the next generation of economic and social actors, which means they pave the path to poverty reduction. The well being of girls today has a direct impact on the well being of the families tomorrow. Educated mothers have healthier and better-educated children. That’s why it is important to support initiatives that empower adolescent girls, and that is why I am here today. Thank you.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you, Liya, for that passion. And now we, I’d like to introduce a video by Her Excellency Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf who is going to speak to us. She would have loved to be with us here today, but this is what, the best we could do to get her by video. Thank you.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON-SIRLEAF: I’m sorry that I can not join you today to celebrate the launch of this groundbreaking initiative. When I was young, it was not easy to be a girl in Liberia, but it is even tougher today. Our civil war disrupted the education of our young people. It also destroyed the family and social environments that protected and supported girls. This is tragic for our girls. Overlooked and undervalued, many turn to the streets for their livelihood. This has devastated the social fabric in Liberia, as today’s adolescent girls will be tomorrow's women. That is why we have to build a strong Liberia today so that adolescent girls have a prosperous future tomorrow and beyond. Liberia needs skilled, able workers. Young women have the potential to fill that need. This initiative has the ability to bridge the two. It will ensure that the girls we reach will gain the right skills and the right employment opportunities in the sectors of business and industry that need them the most. Those girls will contribute to our economic growth. Equally as important, they will cause a ripple effect on those around them. We welcome the World Bank’s catalytic role in bringing partners to the table. We are excited to build on the Nike Foundation's proven experience in girl-focused investments and their reach to other development actors. The solution we developed together for adolescent girls in Liberia can be applied to developing and post-conflict countries everywhere. Even though I cannot be with you today, the most important people in this initiative are sitting there among you – adolescent girls from Liberia and other developing economies. As you listen to their stories and hopes, you are hearing the future of Liberia, of Africa, and maybe even the world. Thank you for your support on this historic day.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Now comes a very important or the most important part of our agenda this morning, and that is for us to listen to the stories of three of our girls who are with us here today. I’m going to introduce each one quickly. But before I do that let me acknowledge the presence of His Excellency the Ambassador of the Republic of Benin, and also let you know that without the work of a small wonderful group here, we wouldn’t have this occasion. They deserve all the credit: Danny Liepziger, Mira Bovnik, Maria Eitel, Olga Sulla, Joe Merrick, Amanda Ellis. Thank you so much.

Now I’d like to begin by introducing our first speaker from among the girls. Her name is Phennapha [?Pomochen], and I’ll ask you to use your headphones because we’re going to need translation from Lao. [background talking] in dentistry earned on a government scholarship. After her father died 10 years ago, her family had a major loss of income and social status, living in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Yet her mother, a primary school teacher and administrator, somehow managed to keep Phennapha, her two older sisters and her younger brother in school. Phennapha gained a strong commitment to community service and put her cherished plans for graduate school on hold until she can afford the tuition. Her work as an HIV/AIDS service volunteer proved that she’s a gifted leader within innovative ideas. After five volunteer years, she recently earned a staff position at the Laos Youth AIDS Prevention Program to lead youth activities and a self-help program for disadvantaged women. Phennapha.

MS. PHOMMACHANH: Good morning. I represent young adolescent Lao girls from Laos. Laos from the past to the present have given guys most opportunity to advance, just like girls, especially in the rural area, have very much a disadvantage, and a woman with HIV infected, they are more disadvantaged. Like in my family, my mother allowed us and our brother to advance in the education very much. Us four girls, we have enough education, according to her, so he has more time to study. Therefore, his GPA is higher in contrary to us, who have to carry on house chores as well as work to earn a living and take care of our family. If I have opportunity to study like my brother, I think I will do a better job, such as that I receive a scholarship from the government and I also work as a volunteer. Many, many times my supervisors send other worker to go to training, and when they come back they haven’t shared their information with the rest of the group. On the other hand, when they send me, I bring all the information to the group and share with the group. The moment I became responsible for our volunteer group, and we have a nationwide network. Out target group is the woman in the disadvantaged position, especially those along the boarder. So, to reach them, it’s not that easy. Many times we have to use a tractor or car to go, or else we’d use two-three days to travel, and once we get there, I see that they do not have the right to education. They don’t have right to be equally employed like the men. We don’t have the equal position. So, for my hope, I would want to reach to higher education, at least up to the master's degree in social work. This will give me the opportunity and empower to help women who are most disadvantaged in my country so that they can get education and also they get vocational skills to bring their own life, to help their life. So I really appreciate this opportunity to be here with you today. Thank you.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you so much, Phennapha, for that wonderful testimony. And now, I’d like to introduce a second speaker, Ana Lousia Cholotio, who comes from Guatemala. Ana Louisa lives in San Juan Laguna on the shore of lake Atitlan, which she proudly says has the shape of a Mayan face. Her father is a fisherman with an eighth-grade education. Her mother is a weaver whose only two years in school began at age 17 in a classroom held under a tree. Her parents survived the brutal civil war that devastated their indigenous communities and families. They have managed to send Ana, her sister and three brothers to school, even as they struggled to feed an extended family of 13 people. Each day Ana walks with her brother to a crowded school that has only book in the classroom to follow her dream that her mother could not have imagined. Ana.

MS. CHOLOTIO: Guatemala is my country, the land of eternal spring. It is a multilingual, multicultural country. I have always dreamed of major changes in my family as well as in my society. For what? So that in Guatemala, we indigenous women, we suffer from three types of discrimination. We are discriminated for being women, for being indigenous, and for being poor. I feel very happy and very proud to be here with you. I had never imagined that I could have an express bus for us. I had never imagined that in introducing a card into a door, the door would open. Comparing that with my family, my father has to go into the forest to cut down trees so to make a door. I had never imagined that there would be so much food on a table and that I could have that food. I always think of my family when I sit at such a table, because I ask myself, have they had breakfast, have they had lunch, or have they had dinner? I thank you all very much for this opportunity. For me, it is one more step in my life, it is one more change in my life. My thanks in particular to the Nike Foundation, to the World Bank, and to Vital Voices for giving me this opportunity. In this manner, we will bring about another change, a major change in my country, and when I speak of a major change, I’m referring to education, to hunger, and to health. I am deeply grateful to you. In this way, my country will achieve a quality, will achieve peace and tranquility. Thank you very much.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you so much, Ana, for that moving, moving comment. Now let me call on our last speaker Joyce Kollie of Liberia. Joyce lives in a single room in Liberia’s capital of Monrovia, along with her parents, two younger sisters and three younger adopted sisters, who were orphaned in the recent civil war. Her family is rebuilding their lives after frequently escaping the heavy shelling that killed many civilians. Her father supports the family by driving a truck back and forth between Liberia and Guinea. Her mother sells cooked vegetables on their doorstep. Joyce says she loves school, even though it has no paper, pencils or books and few chairs. She reads all the English books she can manage to borrow. She volunteers every Sunday as a peer counselor at the Center for Liberian Assistance, teaching young girls safe sex, birth control and life skills. Like so many Liberian girls, Joyce works all her waking hours and has never enjoyed a true childhood. She’s going to describe a typical school day. Joyce.

MS. KOLLIE: My name is Joyce Kollie. I’m 15 years of age. I’m from Liberia. Please help other Liberian girls like me get good education. I want to tell you about my day. I wake up at five o’clock. I cut grass and sew. I gather a [g]. I carry home. I get my sister ready for school. I get ready for school. I walk three miles to my sister's school. I walk back to my school. If I get tired, there is no chair. I have to take a block to sit on or I stand up. My school ends at one o’clock. I walk back to my sister's school. I pick them up. We go home. I leave them at home. I go to the market. I buy food. I bring it home. I cook. we eat. Next, I go to my mother to help her sell. Later in the evening I gather clothes for them to where and help them bathe. I help them with their homework. If I’m tired, I go to bed at nine o’clock. I have to wake up very early the next morning at four o’clock am to do my assignment. That is my day. Thank you.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you, Joyce. Please, let’s stand up and give the girls a standing ovation. Thank you. Well, I guess I’m also overcome with emotion. I want to say a special thank you to the girls, and I think we’ll take a little bit of a break, and Mr. Zoellick will be leaving us. I’m sorry.

MR. ZOELLICK: Well, let me just again thank all of you for the tremendous contributions that you’ve made and I know you're going to make. It’s hard to attend a meeting like this without feeling the tremendous effect it has, you can see it. I was just thinking with Ngozi that if we have this on video, it’s something useful to show to all our colleagues to see what the work is about. So thanks all of you and thank you, Ngozi, and thank you for the girls for taking part and telling us your stories. You're going to have a tremendous future, and all of us are proud to know you, so thank you.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Well, Bob is leaving us, so we’ll continue with the next part of the program, if I can get over my tears. What we’d like to do now is to call on the various sponsors to join us in sharing their statements, and I’d like to begin by asking Ulla, the Minister for Development Cooperation of Denmark, to share with us their remarks.

MS. TORNAES: Thank you very much, Ngozi. First of all, I would like to address my words to the adolescent girls, but of course also to ministers and ladies and gentlemen present in the room. Apart from warmly commending the Bank for making this launch of the Adolescent Girls Initiative such a successful event, I want to skip all formalities and go straight to the points that I want to underline during this occasion. Denmark is very proud to be part of this initiative, which is fully in line with the high political priority we attach to gender equality and economic empowerment of women. I’m pleased to present this book on the 100 new MDG-3 commitments generated by the Global Call to Action Torch Campaign to all of you. The MDG-3 Torches have opened new doors and agendas for gender equality and women’s empowerment worldwide. The 100 commitments provide a solid, innovative platform for new partnerships in support of MDG-3 and for ensuring real results and impact for women and girls, their families and societies. I’m pleased to see so many of the torchbearers present here today, and I was also very pleased by the nice words from the President of the World Bank in relation to the Torch Campaign. Like the existing public-private partnership on adolescent girls launched here today the torch commitments are only the beginning of something much wider magnitude. We, torchbearers from all walks of life, need to use both the Adolescent Girls Initiative and the Torches strategically. Therefore, while I’m very proud of the outcome so far, it is essential for me to underline that I disclaim every intellectual property right to this book and the platform it provides. For the Global Call to Action and the Torches to have a real impact beyond the commitments, we jointly need to ensure global long-term ownership to the new platform created. Rather than looking for projects and events on the side, we must jointly ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment are placed at the very center of our core business, be it in international fora and processes, multilateral organizations, private sector activities or collaboration at country level. I strongly urge for joint action to ensure the highest political priority, increased investment and improved accountability for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Thank you very much.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you, Ulla. Now let me call on Haakon Gulbrandsen, my neighbor, to make his remarks.

MR. GULBRANDSEN: Thank you, Ngozi, and thank you to the young women from Laos, Guatemala, and Liberia for sharing your strong personal history with us. Difference in men and women’s participation in the different economic markets shows already when they are adolescents. There is a substantial difference in young females and young males when it comes to participation in the labor force. If you will not find a paid job or self-employment in the important early years of adulthood, you are more likely to stay out of these markets as an adult, meaning that focusing our economic empowerment of adolescent girls most likely will give positive effect on the economic empowerment of adult women, or it is a necessity to work with economic empowerment of adolescent girls if we are to succeed in economic empowerment of women in general. In poverty, the defining of gender roles takes place and as we all are very aware, gender-defined roles and responsibilities tend to curtail girls' opportunities and decision-making capabilities while broaden those of boys. It is in secondary school that most of the skills training for work and economic participation takes place. We therefore must focus on the transition from primary school to work and secondary school as a critical factor to get adolescent girls skills for work and thereby promote economic empowerment for life. The Adolescent Girls Initiative is correctly focusing on skills training, job placements, incentives, assistance, access to micro finance and monitoring and mentoring and opportunities progress. However, this is not enough. If we are to be serious about economic empowerment of adolescent girls, we must also focus on those mechanisms that enable young women to participate in the labor force or other economic markets. We must face the fact that cultural issues and social institutions play a crucial role in keeping the young girls out of secondary school and paid work. Motherhood, early pregnancy and other maternal health issues are all important factors for women, low participation in secondary school and the economic markets. My conclusion is therefore that moving forward with economic empowerment of adolescent girls and women, we must make sure that our intervention on the ground, that being a project on this new initiative, includes measures aimed at promoting a gender-sensitive environment in terms of community mobilization and service delivery. I’m glad to say that Norway will support the initiative, which will expand our already extensive engagement and cooperation with the World Bank on gender issues and to finally with Angelique Kidjo, Batonga.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you so much, Haakon, and now I call on Martin Dinham, Director General of DFID.

MR. DINHAM: Thank you, Ngozi. It’s a privilege and deeply moving to be here today and to have heard the stories that we have heard. Anyone who’s spent any time at all in a poor country, whether in Africa or Asia or anywhere else, knows what magic takes place when the economic potential of women and girls is unleashed. I think the Nike film brought that out really very nicely. I visited an isolated community in the heart of Madhya Pradesh a few years ago and sat with a group of women and teenage girls who’ve been supported with a small amount of money, some advice, some training, and some modest equipment. Very quickly, they had established a small cooperative for grinding and bagging grain for a UN agency. Soon, they had a steady and growing income stream, which they pooled and they saved and they reinvested in the business. One man was employed by the cooperative, a mechanic, who the women needed to maintain the equipment. Seeing the success of the cooperative and rather anxious about the growing confidence of the women, he oppressed them to pay him a higher wage and threatened to withdrawal his labor if he did not get it. One of the young women took me aside and told me that they had used some of their savings to send one of the girls off to be trained as a mechanic. She’ll be back next week, she said, and then we won’t need this lazy man. It was quite an uplifting tale of empowerment and economic savvy and self-confidence, all achieved in quite a short time. So the UK government strongly supports this ground-breaking initiative for adolescent girls and I'm really excited by the wide alliance it has attracted, as demonstrated by everyone here today. We’ll be providing several million dollars towards it through our collaboration with the Bank in Nepal alongside our strong and continuing support for the World Bank’s Gender Action Plan. We are delighted to see the continuing momentum and priority being given by the Bank to the economic empowerment of girls and women, particularly Bob Zoellick and Ngozi’s strong leadership on this issue. The equation for us is simple: economically empowered girls make better citizens, better mothers, better decision-makers, making better choices for themselves, their families and their communities. It’s the best investment we can make. Thank you.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you so much, Martin, and now I’d like to call on Mr. Joakim Stymne, State Secretary for International Development Cooperation of Sweden. Joakim.

MR. STYMNE: Thank you very much, Ngozi. Dear girls, Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Equal rights and opportunities for all – women and men, boys and girls – are essential for sustainable development. The rights of girls and gender equality are, in turn, necessary to ensure individual freedom and render equal access to opportunities for people to influence their own lives. Only then and by realizing each and everyone’s full potential can we achieve true change. This is why my government has made gender equality a top priority in the International Development Corporation. So having said that, allow me to underline how pleased I am to be present at the launch of this important initiative, to which my government is highly committed. I would also like to take the opportunity to commend the World Bank’s implementation of an action plan to promote gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. This will be an important contribution to achieve broad-based and equitable growth. The option for a girl to get an education before starting a family and having decent work opportunities has enabled millions of women across the world to contribute to economic growth outside of their own homes. The fact that gender equality does make business sense is also becoming more and more widely accepted, and this is of course a highly encouraging development. On this note, I wish to commend President Zoellick for his dedication to advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment within the World Bank and for the new, and for the six new commitments to this end made during the spring meetings. We do know, however, that gender equality is still an absent dimension within this Bank’s six strategic themes and most notably within the theme of fragile states. As fragile states are on the forefront of the Bank’s agenda, I would very much like to encourage the Bank to mainstream a gender equality perspective in this theme, not least for the sake of adolescent girls who are particularly vulnerable in situations of conflict. Dear friends, my government is a committed sponsor and supporter of the Bank Group's Gender Action Plan, Gender Equality as Smart Economics. My Minister for International Development Cooperation, Miss Gunilla Carlsson, is proud to be an active member of the Bank’s Advisory Council on Women’s Economic Empowerment. So I take this opportunity to pass on her strong personal support for the Adolescent Girls Initiative. I’m also happy and proud to announce that Sweden will support the initiative with three million dollars over a period of three years and that we are delighted to sponsor the work in Rwanda. Thank you.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you so much, and now let me call on Cherie Blair, founder Cherie Blair Women’s Foundation.

MS. BLAIR: Thank you, Ngozi. Can I address my remarks to three groups in the room? First of all, to Phennapha, to Ana Lousia, to Joyce, and to the other girls who we’re going to hear from, I think, later on, can I say to you how proud I was to see you here today, how strong and confident you are, and how proud you should be of yourselves. You have come, all of you, a very long way, but you’re not just here for yourselves. You’re actually here representing hundreds of thousands of girls like you in your country and in countries across the world, illustrating just what can happen if we do, in fact, grasp that girl power. So, be strong, be confident, but be aware that it’s hard out there, and that there will be times when you will find it very difficult, but hold on to this, that this is your right. You are entitled to be treated as equals. You are not entitled to be ignored or marginalized just because you are girls, and if you are strong, and if we can support you, we can make sure that that doesn’t happen. But I also want to say something to the other women in this room, because we all were girls once. I was a girl. I was a girl whose mother had to leave school when she was 14 because her own mother had died, and she had to support and look after her father and her brother. I was a girl whose mother was abandoned by her father and had to find any job in order to support myself and my sister. I was a girl who through education, and yes through hard work, ended up living in number 10 Downing Street, which is the residence of the Prime Minister of Great Britain. But I know I was not a girl who’s unique. There are many, many women in this room who can tell similar stories of achievement brought about through opportunity and taking those opportunities, and I know that across the world there’s a huge feeling of goodwill from women, from whatever country they come from, towards other women and particularly towards young girls like you, the determination to see that you have opportunities which we struggled for that you have better opportunities and that you don’t, and that the world doesn’t fall back into the complacency which regards women as somehow not being equal to men. Because I know all the women in this room know that as long as there is one woman or one girl across the world who’s regarded as somehow not worthy just because she’s a girl, then all of us in this room who are female are also suffering and are discriminated against. So we must stand together in solidarity. And the third group I want to address in this room are the men, the men who are here, because actually they do support us already, to Bob Zoellick and to Mark Parker, who are actually putting their money where their mouth is. I hope that you’re standing here because you are fathers, because you are husbands, and because you are sons, and because all of you in your journey’s have learned that actually men and women work so much better together when they treat each other with respect, the respect that those who are of equal worth show to each other. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I just followed remarks from countries such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and indeed my own country, because we look at all of the measures you’ll see that they’re the countries where actually women haven’t achieved full equality because we all know women haven’t anywhere in the world, but where at least that they are achieving more equality than many other parts of the world. So, congratulations to the men who are here. We are not here because we think you are lazy men, we are here because you think we think that you are our brothers in arms and that together across the world we can make the 21st century a world not just where women’s voices are heard, but when everybody has an equal right to be heard. Thank you.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you so much, Cherie for those very, very thoughtful words, now let me call on Dina Powell, a true friend and partner. Dina’s the head of Corporate Engagement of Goldman Sachs and a Managing Director there. Dina.

MS. POWELL: Thank you so much, Ngozi. It really is such a privilege to be here today with all of you. It’s taken such tremendous commitment and leadership by so many individuals like President Zoellick and you, Ngozi, and our dear friends at Nike, who have shown such passion and commitment. I’ve seen Mark and Maria all over the world showing up and saying how proud they are to be in support of so many millions of women, just like you, around the world. We at Goldman Sachs were very proud last year when our chairman announced an initiative called 10,000 Women, which seeks, like Angelique said, to answer the question of taking girls from schooling to work, of empowering women to become a generation of engines of economic growth. You see, we are always asked what’s the best investment that we could find, and it was so evident and so clear, and even today, even more, it is so evident that it is now indisputable that investing in women around the world is truly the best path to forging a more peaceful and prosperous world. I have to say that we have also been listening to so many leaders beyond the Nike Foundation and Gita Gupta at the International Center for Research on Women, and Vital Voices and to the very proud loud voice of Ms. Ngozi, who asked me when she was in London with us, just a few weeks ago, in the second phase of our announcement: Dina, what are you doing in Liberia? Then, more importantly, she asked our chairman the same question. She really encouraged us to make investments there with President Johnson-Sirleaf, and so with Prime Minister Rasmussen of Denmark, our Chairman and CEO was very proud to announce, and President Johnson-Sirleaf, a new commitment in Liberia where we will work to educate 300 Liberian women in management and business education, in a collaboration with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, who actually began a 30 million dollar loan facility just two years ago, but have not seen enough women qualify. So we are truly proud to be here as partners with President Johnson-Sirleaf, with Chairman Mosbacher, and with you as well. You know, for us, we have truly tried to use the convening power that we have to encourage many, many more institutions to engage in this vital commitment, and it leads me to remember as an Egyptian woman myself, a very famous Egyptian poet once said that when you educate a girl, you create a nation. Phennapha, Ana Louisa and Joyce, and all of you are truly creating nations that are going to make this world the world that we all hope will be a better place for all of our daughters and sons. Thank you so much.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you, Dina, for those inspiring words. Now I’d like to call on Paila Danal the America’s Head for Public Affairs of Standard Chartered.

MS. DANAL: Thank you, Ngozi. I’m delighted to be here today at the launch of the Adolescent Girls Initiative. I think it’s a very special event and thank you so much to the young girls who share their stories. I think what’s very important is that you’ve given a voice to these issues at a time when voices of young girls in emerging markets are getting lost, and we cannot let that happen. So, thank you so much for speaking loudly and proudly about what you go through every day. I’m here today because Standard Chartered Bank has always believed in the transformative power of greater economic participation by women and young girls in society. Standard Chartered gets 90 percent of its revenues from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, so we’re invested, both literally and figuratively, in the fate of these economies, and we believe that the key to driving economic development is investing in women and in girls. So gender has always been a major focus for us at the Bank, and we’ve been approaching it and investing in women in three different ways that I’d like to share. One, we look at women as customers, how we as a bank can best serve the needs of women who have different needs than perhaps other customers. So we’ve developed specialized products, such as women-only branches in India and Pakistan, and specialized products like credit cards that cater specifically to women and serve their needs. We also look at our employees, and I’m proud to say that out of our 75,000 employees globally, half are women. So we think to sustain our competitive advantage, we need to get the best out of everyone, a broad spectrum of people, and so I’m happy to say that we’re working internally to make sure that the voices of women are also championed. Lastly, the community, of course. We look at interventions, things that we can do to empower women in the communities which we serve. So we’ve recently just finished a pilot program in India that uses sport to help women, young girls in college and in high schools build leadership skills and also build the confidence they need to go out and be a contribute to the economy. I’m happy to say that we’re looking now to expand in other countries we’re in, and we’ve also just started a program where we’re working with women, small business owners to make sure they know and have the skills they need to operate effectively in these very challenging circumstances. So I think we’re doing good work, but there’s still so much more that needs to be done, and I think this event is a great forum to share what we can, how we can work together and really address the needs of women and young girls. So thank you so much for letting us be a partner.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you, thank you very much, and I want to call now on Diana Bracco, the President of EXPO Milano 2015 Foundation.

MS. BRACCO: Thank you very much, thank you, dear President Zoellick and dear Director Ngozi and dear girls. As president of the Milan EXPO 2015 Foundation, I’m here to represent Italian entrepreneurs in their commitment to support the many ongoing initiatives that will lead to EXPO 2015 and a focal point will be education for young women. This is why we are so enthusiastic about this initiative from school to quality work. Our EXPO is, first and foremost, a great program for international solidarity, based on education, science and research, and sustainable growth, and African countries will play a key role in this project. The symbol for EXPO 2015 will not be a landmark, as in previous editions, but an actual center for sustainable growth. In a world driven by the internet and online communication, by a knowledge-based economy, we must overcome architectural symbols and to develop networks among people to share expertise, allow ideas to circulate, develop competencies and, of course, human resources will be the element for the success of the Milano EXPO. Among these resources, women represent the greatest potential of all, in particular, today’s young girls, who will be the women of 2015. Women have those very characteristics, flexibility, pragmatism and ability to focus on results. They are key factors in today’s global economy, and that could give them a crucial role. Everywhere and especially developing countries women will be a force for enhancing social change, and in fact our plans for EXPO 2015 involve a direct commitment to support the development of women in business, for example, through micro credit programs. Today in front of you, of this audience of young women, I feel emotion and pride, as well a sense of optimism and confidence in the future of the planet because these are the people who will be building that future. Looking forward to seeing you soon in Milan, it is an honor now for me to introduce you to the video of the Mayor of Milan, Mrs. Litizia Moratti, who inspired this vision. Thank you very much.

MS. MORATTI: Dear President Zoellick, dear director Okonjo-Iweala, and dear girls gathered here in Washington from all the countries of the world, I’m honored to participate in this World Bank convention and to develop and test policies for the empowerment of adolescent girls. Both personally and as the mayor of Milan and as Extraordinary Government Commissioner for Milan, Italy, EXPO 2015, I’m happy to give a substantial contribution to these innovative public-private partnership. We know very well the importance of promoting the initiative for adolescent and especially girls in entrepreneurial and productive activities and this effort becomes strategic in poor and post-conflict countries, and for this reason this initiative has the same vision and spirit that moved us in order to obtain the universal EXPO for Milano 2015 and the same philosophy that brought us to develop a partnership with a UN Millennium Campaign devoted to reach the Millennium Development Goals before 2015. In this perspective, we have to remember that the second goal recalls the urgency to achieve universal primary education, and the third asked for more gender equality and empower women, and Milan and Italy have undertaken this common path together with international organizations and multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, but yet despite our strong commitment, we are all aware of the fact that we are still very far from the achievement of the goals, and for that reason we strongly believe that we have to create new opportunities. We have to find new tools to contribute to the end results, and for these reasons I’m happy and honored to announce that Milan participated to the World Bank campaign Adopt a Country, because through this new kind of network Milan and Italy EXPO can offer best practices, experiences in education, in vocational training, and in new tools such as micro finance. As it happens for environment, where we have already built an innovative partnership with World Bank, our global world needs more and more new and concrete solutions to face the challenges of development, and moving in this direction, EXPOs can be seen as an open space that can host skills, projects and initiatives for all of the world. EXPO is a powerful means to improve and integrate different players such as universities, research labs, NGOs, foundations, and public and private institutions. I know that you all, dear girls ,belong to the EXPO 2015 generation, and therefore I wish, and I’m sure, that I will be seeing you again in Milan in seven years from now working from now all together for a better world. Thank you very much.

MS. OKONJO-IWEALA: Thank you very much. That concludes all the statements and concludes this section of the program. I want to thank you for the wonderful morning that we’ve had, especially the girls, and everyone is now invited to lunch, and I think we have people who will lead the way, but the lunch is in the 12th floor gallery, so not too far from here. Okay.