Some of the most memorable moments I've had is to have my family along - who are our greatest ambassadors for peace. Politics will never bring peace, but people will.

We all sat there laughing and sipping tea peacefully, an infidel and representatives from three warring sects of Islam. And I thought if we can get along this well, we can accomplish anything. The British policy was ‘divide and conquer.’ But I say ‘unite and conquer.

Once I started the first school, I realized this is what my life is meant to be, is to promote education and help kids go to school and that's very clear.

If you teach a boy, you educate an individual; but if you teach a girl, you educate a community.

You can hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change.

Because most of the girls were still in mourning and all of them had lost their textbooks, even pencils and pens, Shaukat Ali began the first classes by reading to them from poetry and religious texts. "Reading, literature, and spirituality are good for the soul," he told them. "So we will start with these studies.

My father ended up starting the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, which is on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. My mother started a school.