Imagine an uneducated version of Barack Obama. Imagine if all Obama ever became was a local farmer in a Kenyan village, with no dreams beyond the next harvest. Imagine how hard people would have laughed if they had been told; “Obama was destined to be the president of the United States.” 

Imagine Malala Yousafzai, not as the Nobel Laureate advocating for girls’ education, but as a girl confined to her home, silenced by fear and denied the right to learn. Who would have known what great impact she’d have made had she been educated? What would have become of the thousands of girls that are now benefiting from her cause?

Imagine Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Not as the celebrated author whose words shape lives and global policies, but as a woman whose stories never left her thoughts because she was never able to read and write. 

Now, imagine that girl in the village with no ability to read or write. What if she’s the next Oprah? The next Chimamanda? Right now, her only glimpse of the future is the day Alhaji comes to marry her, but imagine who she could become if taken out of her limiting thoughts and circumstances? Imagine the heights she can reach if educated, trained and exposed. 

What if that boy you always see selling groundnuts near your house dreams to be a president? Or build the next Tesla? Or solve a global issue? But he’s trapped as a hawker, unable to harness his potential because he can’t even write well enough to apply for a competition, or scholarship, or write a publication, or anything that would take him out of where he is. 

See how powerful education is?

Everyone has a bright future, but without opportunities like education, that future risks being dimmed before it even begins. People’s destinies are crumbling every day just because they don’t have what it takes to thrive. So the next time you see children on the streets, look at them in the light of who they could be and what they could become. Let us give our children the power to BECOME.

Support a child’s education today.