already been introduced, i'd like for him to come out and take a chair. second -- [ applause ] the first woman ever to be secretary of state of the united states, appointed by some long ago president, madeleine albright. [ cheers and applause ] who -- madeleine -- [ cheers and applause ] here is -- you know what that reminded me of, for some bizarre reason? the time we went to buenos aires and went to the tango place.

anyway, here's what i want to you know about madeleine. she is a professor at georgetown school of foreign service, my alma mater, but in her current life, she is a citizen servant, chairman of the national democratic institute, president of the truman scholarship foundation, on the boards of council on foreign relations, the aspen institute, the center for american progress. third, i'd like to call out the founder of carolina for khybera rye barrot. [ applause ] he wrote an amazing book that some of you are familiar with, "it happened on the way to war." he co-founded carolina for khybera, a nongovernmental

organization to prevent ethnic and gender violence in nairobi while serving in the united states marine corps. he's a graduate of the university of north carolina chapel hill. the kennedy school and the business school at harvard, where he was a rental social entrepreneurship fellow. he lives in charlotte, north carolina, with his wife and daughter, and among other things, works in duke energy sustainability department as a special adviser to the chairman. i'd like to invite out sadika basiria saline, the executive director of the learning center in afghanistan. [ applause ]

she wins the prize for having to work the hardest to get here, and to do what she does. when she was 5, sadika fled to pakistan during the soviet occupation, and returned to afghanistan hampered by her own lack of education. i mean, to afghanistan, which was hampered by a lack of education. there are about 30 million people in afghanistan, and when she came back, fewer than 900,000 children, mostly boys, had any access to education. along with three other women, she cobbled together enough money to begin the education of 36 girls in an abandoned mosque in 2003. through the learning center, she now educates more than 3,400 girls in 6 schools, 200 women at

4 literacy centers. [ applause ] and 120 women in a community college. she's established the family welfare center for the elimination of violence against women, a domestic violence prevention initiative that serves 14,000. she received her own bachelor's degree in international relations from mt. holyoke college in 2009. and she founded her nation's first women's community college to train college-aged women management, leadership, advocacy and lobbying skills. we are all in her debt. thank you. [ applause ] our last panelist is a good friend of mine, known to the larger world, i'm his token old friend, not old friend, old, friend.

known to the world as usher. [ cheers and applause ] usher raymond iv has been an award-winning artist for more than 15 years, known for his fluid voice and his dynamic dance moves. his acting in film, television and stage, including a broadway stint as billy flynn in the tony-award winning musical "chicago." he's won multiple grammys for his work, but in addition to all that, he has been a staunch advocate for youth empowerment and education, and has proven to be a powerful force by mentoring young people around the world through his new look foundation. in july, 2011, usher held a second annual world leadership conference and awards in atlanta, where 500 young people from around the world convened to develop real world solutions to global problems.

he is a very good man, who is doing something that someone in his position does not have to do, and i've been down there at his event, and i can tell you, it's not for show. it's the real deal. please welcome usher. [ cheers and applause ] am i -- yes. somebody shouted "marry me." he can't do that. he's got a family, but he likes your applause. i would like to -- i want to

begin with ri. so you're in the marine corps, and you should tell everybody where khybera is. what skills did you get in the marine corps that got you involved in that kind of work and how did you decide when you left the stint in the service, to do this? >> how many of you all have heard of khyber before? all right. a few hands up. it's located on the outskirts of nairobi, kenya. residents there call it a slum and it is a slum community, about half a million folks live there in an area about the size of central park, and i was a junior at usc chapel hill, and i knew that i was going into the marine corps because that was

really my first calling in life. my father had served in the marines, and like all of us here in this room, you know, i wanted to make a difference, and the marine corps appeared to be a way to do that. and so i chased that dream, and it had a clarifying effect. when you're at college, you often hear that, use this opportunity to discover what you want to do, and i think it is an amazing moment in life to discover what you want to do, but it really helps if you have a little bit of an idea going into it, and so i was able to kind of craft my studies based on my service going into the marines. this was in 2000, so it was before september 11th, and most of the missions that the marines were engaged on were peacekeeping missions so i wanted to have a better understanding of why ethnic violence happened in the world, and a mentor of mine who was an anthropologist at school told me

there's only so much you can learn from books and if you really want to understand why something happens in the world you got to go someplace and actually put yourself into it. so i had taken some swahili classes with our starting lineup for the men's basketball team. we were all in class together and that was important for me because you had to learn some local language before going to a place that's very different from your own, and the marine corps really gave me, because i was going through training at that time, they really gave me the courage in some ways to go to a place that was very different from my own and confront some of my fears in doing so, and so i rented a small 10 x 10 foot shack in khybera with a young person who was about my age and i just asked questions and i just listened. listening -- president clinton asked what some of the skills were from the military that translated to the ngo world. listening was not one of them.

listening is actually a skill that translated from ngo work to the military, and what we can do better on in the military, but i wasn't intending to start an organization, and what i realized in these really difficult conditions was a fundamental truth in the world, and that is that talent is universal, but opportunity is not. talent is universal, but opportunity is not. [ applause ] yeah. it's really a truth, and so the question is how do you best connect that talent with opportunity, and i didn't know what the answer was, but i continued to form some relationships and over many years we built an organization called carolina for khybera, a co-founder was a neighbor of mine named tabitha vesto. she was a former nurse. she was widowed with three kids. toward the end of my first summer, she confronted me and

she asked me for 2,000 shillings, which is the equivalent of $26. i made an effort not to give out any money in khyber in part because i didn't know where to begin and for my own safety, and so i asked her what she was planning to do with it. she said i'm going to sell veggies, vegetable, i'm going to sell vegetables in khybera and buy them and sell them across town in a somali community where i can undercut the competition. so she looked at me and she said, you know, believe in me. she had a plan, and i was leaving the next day, and it was only 26 bucks. and so i handed her the 2,000 shillings. i came back to the united states, i went to boot camp for officers, officer candidate school in the marines, and then i went into my senior year and as i was going into my senior year this line from the marines kept sticking in my head and the line was have a bias for action, a bias for action, and what i was doing back at school was i was writing this research report, this thesis, i wasn't doing anything. i wasn't giving back anything to

this particular community, where i had fallen into some relationships that mattered. long story short, i decided to start an organization, we called it carolina for khybera, it was in my dorm room, my 10 x 10 senior year, midway through it. initially the goal use sports, soccer particularly to bring ethnic groups together and raise money and the marine corps gave me three months of unpaid leave to do this. in part because i think most of the military commanders i served with had an appreciation preventing violence, the costs to prevent violence are always far lower than the costs to intervene during it, and we see that today for sure. i return back to khybera, i had no idea whether or not i'd see tabitha again. i barely remembered her from the previous year, but she found me. she found me and took me zigzagging through these alleyways to her own 10 x 10.

what she had done, she'd taken her savings from selling vegetables for six months, about $100 and pursued her dream. she started a small medical clinic out of her shack, and she was a nurse and she was offering quality care, and it made a lot of sense for us, for this, for her to become a part of our organization, carolina for khybera, and as we grew it together over many years fake taking what we call a participatory approach, she grew that clinic, and today that clinic treats over 40,000 patients a year. 40,000 patients a year. and i'm going to wrap up but it started with $26. but $26 in the hands of a remarkable person, working in partnership together, taking a long view, taking a participatory approach over ten years, and when i step back and i think about being in your shoes, i remember just feeling so overwhelmed by the number of options that you had, that i have, that you all have, in

school, and i still think real change, real social change in particular, it takes that depth of commitment to a particular place, and that's what i hope that you'll be able to find with the causes and the places that you care about. >> thank you. so madeleine, i want to ask you to talk a little bit about what you do now, and why it's fine even when you're not a college student, why you and i do what we do, and what do you want to say to them about what you think their potential is to have a world that's more peaceful than the one we're living in? >> well, thank you, and i'm really honored to be here on this panel. let me say i have always tried to look for something that's

more interesting to do than the thing i did before. not easy if you've been secretary of state, but what i have done is to put the skills that i learned as secretary of state in terms of trying to solve problems, finding people that can help solve problems, and then do whatever i can to give back. so it's a combination of things. i do believe that one of the greatest problems that we have in the world today is the gap between the rich and the poor. there are, by absolute numbers -- [ applause ] -- there are fewer poor people mainly because the chinese have brought so many people out of poverty, but the gap between the rich and the poor is the most serious one. it's wrong, and it's also dangerous, and so the things that i've been involved in are, one, actually that was, i was asked to do this by the current secretary of state, called partners for a new beginning,

which is to try to get private corporations to work with the government in terms of economic empowerment of people, primarily at this moment in muslim communities, but to try to get their way to have economic empowerment, science and technology, education. people exchanges. those are the vertical pillars. and the horizontal ones is to get youth and women involved. and so we are in a variety of places using the skills and trying to get our corporations to be helpful in terms of creating job opportunities. so that's one thing. the other thing as the president mentioned, i'm chairman of the board of the national democratic institute. you can't impose democracy. that's an oxymoron. what you can do is try to support those who want to learn the skills of democracy. so through the national democratic institute, we're in about 70 countries where we train people in terms of how you

form coalitions, how you create campaigns. supporting women candidates. and it allows people to work on behalf of those who need help. i love teaching because i think that it is a way really to talk about what the opportunities are for you all in terms of giving back. my whole life has been about giving back. i wasn't born in this country. i came here when i was 11 years old in order to escape communism. and i have been grateful ever since. and public service, i think, is an amazing way to give back. and i will forever be grateful to this wonderful president who allowed me to be able to use the goodness of american power to make the difference for an awful lot of people to end ethnic cleansing to make sure people had an opportunity to live a free life. i took those skills now in a way to give back in this way and particularly working with young people.

i was in khyber, actually, i went there for a project with a wonderful program about legal empowerment for the poor. and the part -- poor people aren't stupid. they are very entrepreneurial. maybe more than a lot of people. they just want an opportunity and the kinds of things that ri is doing that cgi does, that president clinton has been doing is giving people who want to make a difference the opportunity to do it, and i hope i'll be able to do that until the day i die. [ applause ] >> i just want to point out both in my first term when madelyn was our ambassador to the united nations and american military action ended the war in bosnia, and my second term where we did the same thing in kosovo, the primary victims that we sought to save were almost all muslims.

and i thought it was very important to prove that the united states meant what we said when we said everybody is welcome here. and we believe in human rights of people all over the world. and it was just fortuitous that when i -- it was sad for them, but it was a fortuitous opportunity that it was our responsibility to stop the ethnic cleansing of european muslims in bosnia and kosovo and she was great at it. [ applause ] >> so, i want to ask you, you need to fill in the blanks of the introduction i gave you. a lot of people would hear your story and say, my goodness. the woman was taken out of afghanistan with a child. and she went back. then she gets out and graduates from mt. holyoke, a very

distinguished american university. she could have gone anywhere and done anything and she goes back home to one of the poorest places on earth where most people think they have poorer political prospects. i have always thought that when people say afghanistan is a dead bang loser and we shouldn't be involved in there, the british got run out of there, everybody that ever tried to conquer afghanistan got run out of there. i thought, that's because you should empower the people in the place to conquer their own future. so "a" why did you do it? why did you go home when you could have taken a pass? "b," when you started this, how did you begin? and how have you funded the expansion? tell them a little bit about what you did and why. >> well, the reason i came here,

to mt. holyoke, i'll be honest in saying that it was my luck that i made it to mt. holyoke college. but the reason why i went back home, the initial reason to come to the united states to get education was to really get education myself and contribute to the cause that is so dear to me. and i see a huge connection between educated people in a proud nation. i strongly believe that it will be the educated people who will be able to move us forward. i mean, we have been in war for the past three decades. i was born in war. i was raised in war. and i still live in war. and i don't think that war is the solution. i strongly believe that only education is the solution to the whole problem. not only in afghanistan, but in the region.

[ applause ] but what really made me to really work in the education sector, it could be any sector. afghanistan is a poor country, devasta devastated, there are great needs. but now that i reflect back, i see that there are questions that has really shaped my mission. the first question is coming from an angry angle. and that is when i was a child, i was questioning the education that i was getting. the system that i was getting education in. it was a poor refugee school. and then later in life, i was questioning myself, i was challenged by women who did not have any idea what does education mean or how does a

school look like? so to tell my story. when i went to my school as a refugee child, it was a school that was established in pakistan. so basically my school was a huge school for over 3,000 girls conducted in 2 sessions in the morning and also in the afternoon. but it was not a real school for me as a child. because the real school for me was the school that would look like in western movies. the school that i went to it had only 20 classrooms. about more than 30 tents. and a huge playground that was taken all over by classes conducted in dust and open air, including mine. so what i did, i was not a passionate student. and i have not really shared

this story, but i'm sharing it today. i was an extremely slow student. i was getting a lot of punishment from my teachers. but i was fighting for my class. when we had a new blackboard so we could only enjoy it for one week at the most. because senior classes would steal our blackboard. usually they were of poor quality. they would develop cracks. then we were even fighting for space. so the way to identify where our class is is to put stones and make a square and put our blackboard in it. so the school, that was not an ideal school for me. therefore, i was not studying. one day my teacher, she beated me so hard that my palm -- she was using a stick that had probably a cacti so my hand

started bleeding. i still have the scar in my palm. that was the time that my father made a decision to take us back to afghanistan. afghanistan in 1994, it was still civil war. the reason my father wanted to take us was to experience what is life like back home so when we return, we are not caught by surprise. so in 1994 when i got home, one day i was walking in an orchard with my cousins. they asked me questions. they said, tell me what does your school look like? how do teachers look like? is it true you go to school alone and you return by yourself? i was angry in the first place. i thought maybe they were making fun of me, but later i discussed that with my father. and my father asked me a different question. did you notice any school all

the way coming from pakistan to afghanistan? any hospital? any clinic? any store? anything? and my answer was no. so basically for me, it was all these questions that really shaped my motive. that really shaped my mission. and it is easy to criticize things as i did in my childhood. it's easy to be angry at things, but it's equally important to reflect back and see that, okay, we could be critical, but then i think it's important to answer one question. what can i do to make a change? and i think that that was the beautiful gift that my father ever gave us was to take us back to our home where we initially came from and see that i was way privileged compared to my own cousins when they were living.

in afghanistan. so i think for me, that was the beautiful gift that my father had given to us to take us out of afghanistan and provide us the education. all of that was poor, but it really helped me to reflect back and really get things that i could not have received if i was living back home. and that motivated me to go to afghanistan after the fall of the taliban, establish the first class with 36 girls. later on i received proposals from other communities to establish further classes and schools. and here my life is. that is pretty much my vision. to bring education to girls and women in the most remote areas in afghanistan where they will not have access to education. [ applause ]

>> usher, anybody that gets that kind of reception you did when you came out here and has made the kind of money you've had and has the kind of profile you have would have to set up some sort of charitable operation. but you know as well as i do that a lot of people in your position in the past have done that and just checked the box. and i know you haven't just checked the box. you've thought about what i wanted to do. you thought about why you wanted to do it. and once you did it, you went all in. i've seen some of your kids. and i must say i didn't know until we did our deal together when you kicked it off that you

were, perhaps, the discoverer of justin bieber, which will get you some more points with some of these people. i want you to tell these young people why you decided to do exactly what you're doing? and how you stay involved in it now to make sure it achieves the objectives you want. >> absolutely. you would assume to whom much is given, much is required. or there should be a consideration. well, i kind of flipped that. because i was given a lot at a very young age by simply someone believing in me. someone encouraging me to move in a positive direction, which a lot of people my age at the time, coming from at-risk environments, underserved