If you don't have an effective teacher in front of the classroom, you won't change the trajectory for students.

When we invest in women and girls, we are investing in the people who invest in everyone else.

I felt suicidal. I couldn't stop crying. I remember thinking, wouldn't it be great if the car crashed and I died?

Even in decision-making, we work in self-help groups. That is women coming together in small groups of 10 to sometimes 15 women, where they start to get education about their rights, about clean water and sanitation, about how to have a healthy birth. You can bring in all kinds of education to them that way.

In the developing world, it's about time that women are on the agenda. For instance, 80 percent of small-subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and yet all the programs in the past were predominantly focused on men.

You are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids.