It’s true.
When they said your greatest teachers would not be your textbooks but the friends you made, they were right.
Over the short summer, I’ve been encouraged by some of the most amazing women in my class:
From Iran to Ecuador, Syria to China, USA to Cameroon to India, these women’s dreams of changing the norm, standing up for justice and serving the underprivileged have encouraged me every day.
Above all you’ve done already and your dreams to impact lives in the future, your stories of tremendous courage to triumph over war and conflict, societal stigma, and personal pain and loss have inspired me in the deepest ways.
Some of you have had to flee wars, while some of you plunged right into them, at the risk of everything you had, and everything you knew.
Some of you have gone through grievous losses, and yet continue serving, and have emerged stronger. You challenged my own ideals of servanthood and redefined what privilege means, the responsibility it entails.
All of you know that with this degree, you could get a cushy job, get famous, be comfortable. But you remain committed to return to where you’ve come from, where brokenness and pain and poverty had gripped you and given you a reason to, against all odds, come here and go home, go global to make a difference.
You are vulnerable and resilient, broken yet incredible. You push yourselves out of your comfort zones to make a difference to the lives of others. You’ve been torn down and you’ve come back up.
You’re all global leaders in your own right, and yet incredibly grounded, impossibly humble.
They said you could not, but you did.
And here you are.
I should not be here among you. A year and a half ago, sitting at a Forbes Asia “30 under 30” award ceremony celebrating young changemakers around the world, I remember feeling so out of place, so undeserved.
But it was when an elderly Afghan woman went on stage to share about the work she had done to give Afghan girls a chance to attend school, at the expense of continual death threats, that I first had a vision of me being here at Hopkins. It was when she spoke, that I felt God rekindle that dream in my heart, that with Him, all things are possible.
Thank you for inspiring me in your unique ways, for obliging me with this photo. This is just a tiny glimpse into the many, many incredible people I’ve met in the past two months at Hopkins, who’ve come from all over the world.
Because when Sarah-Faith grows up, I want her to see examples of women who dared to dream and live sacrificially for others.
I hope she catches that fire that you have, to light up this world.
Keep dreaming, girls.
