As a child, almost all the dentists, doctors, physiotherapists and other professionals Nadia Badawi visited were female.
She grew up believing women just happened to dominate in such roles. Later, she realised it was a deliberate strategy by her father to ensure his daughters were continually in contact with women pursing what may have once been considered male-only professions.
The strategy worked on Badawi, who great up with few limitations on what she believed she could achieve. She’s now a doctor, neonatologist, professor and expert in newborn encephalopathy and cerebral palsy.
“My father had this idea that if you were exposed to female professionals, that you would model yourselves on them,” she says. “Because if you don’t look at somebody you deal with every day, how do you know?”
Badawi shared her childhood experiences at a charity lunch for School for Life in Sydney on Thursday, during a panel discussions with social entrepreneur Jan Owen AM, Pottinger CEO Cassandra Kelly and Granville Boys school principal Linda O’Brien.
They all praised the work of Annabelle Chauncy, the co-founder of School for Life, who decided to offer her own solution for helping women and girls in East Africa after a stint teaching English in Kenya at the age of 21.
Chauncy told the audience how that early teaching experience involved working in a school made from a mud hut, with no electricity or running water. The students had no uniforms, or books, or any kind of teaching aid. What they did have was resilience and a passion to learn. While there, she met Dave Everett, and together they decided to work at offering solutions for overcoming some of the key challenges in the region.
“We decided, with joint ambition, to provide sustainable education for children in East Africa.” They launched the School for Life Foundation, an organisation running a school in rural Uganda, including employment and vocational training. It’s all based on the well-established fact that education creates lasting change in a community.
All the women who spoke yesterday, including Chauncy, were the product of great education. That doesn’t mean they attended the most expensive or so-called prestigious education. Rather, that they were taught to appreciate the value of a great education, to aspire for a life of learning and to use knowledge as a means for career happiness, satisfaction, and tool for changing the world,
Cassandra Kelly noted that the question she repeatedly likes to ask herself, and anyone who wants to make a difference, is ‘where to from here?’
Her own answer, is simple: away from here. “Away from the status quo. Away from the destination I’ve just arrived at,” she said. “I’ve never wanted to stop moving, I don’t want to stop learning. I don’t want to stop trying to make a difference … So how do I get there? By being part of the solution and not waiting on others to fix it for me.”
Meanwhile, Jan Owen shared her experiences working with 23 girls from around the world earlier this week at the G(irls)20 Summit. The 24th girl who was due to attend from Afghanistan was at the last minute stopped from travelling to Australia. That didn’t stop those who could get here from ensuring she could, in other ways, participate, and to also work at solutions that could aid all girls in Afghanistan.
You don’t have to create a school in Uganda to change the life of a girl, and therefore the world.
Teaching the value of education, as well as passion for the lifelong pursuit of knowledge, can change the lives of girls and women everywhere. Those girls may just create their own schools, or determine the big innovations and ideas that solve even the world’s most complex problems.
And another thing…
There was one thing missing from yesterday’s lunch at the Tea Rooms in Sydney’s QVB: the table arrangements.
Instead of the usual centerpieces, scissors, string and flowers were scattered across the table with instructions informing guests how to arrange their own bunch – and to later hand them to a stranger or somebody they believe would appreciate receiving them.
It was a lovely touch from event partner Little Flowers. As co-founder Sarah Regan said: “It was all about working together to create something beautiful. Because everyone has a role to play, no matter how big or small you may think yours is.”