Kathy Calvin Quotes

It's harder to be a poor person than anything else.

Gender data is important. If girls don’t have a birth certificate, how do we know how many are marrying as children?

Phones are powerful at providing information.

Global is a unifying bond for people. Once they get outside their own heads and their own communities and see themselves in a broader framework, it really changes their sense of what they can get done. It all adds up for us.

Young people aren't the leaders of tomorrow. They are the leaders of today and tomorrow.

Change always starts with a girl.

Being poor is not like being a victim. Being poor means that you don't have one resource.

Collaboration gets me excited.

Tomorrow is Now... If we act, 2015 can be a year for the history books. It can be the year that we put the world on the path to end extreme poverty; the year we place sustainability at the heart of our future; and the year that we agree that every person should be able to lead a life of dignity and opportunity.

I'm a positive person who likes to see things get done.

When the Berlin Wall fell and suddenly all those countries had burgeoning democracies, women were still being left out. The big turning point, about ten years ago, was moving from a notion of empowering women to actually looking at where you can make the most difference, and it's in a girl's life.

The resilience and the resourcefulness of people to make a better life, to survive, to give their children something better than they had, is so inspiring. I look at how hard it must be to get up every day and fight that battle and I think, Wow, anything I'm doing just has to be in service.

One of the things that people aren't aware of is how much progress is being made in eradicating poverty and providing a healthier life and longevity for people around the world.

I'm inspired by the resilience of people around the world.

You probably don't think twice about going into your kitchen and turning a few knobs to prepare a meal for yourself and your family on an electric or gas range. But for nearly 3 billion people in developing countries who depend on solid fuels to cook their food, the simple act of cooking results in 4 million premature deaths every year from exposure to toxic smoke.

Women and girls have been my passion for my whole life.

If you can get to a girl and make a difference in her life, you're actually going to have a greater impact on a woman's life. If you don't get to her as a girl, you may not be able ever to help her as a woman.