← A Podcast of One's Own with Julia Gillard
A Podcast of One's Own with Julia Gillard
Angie Murimirwa on the transformative power of education
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- [00:00]
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- [00:36]
Angie Muromiwa
There is something really audacious and bold about going to the hardest hit and making it work. And the level of support that that generates in the communities is amazing.
- [00:53]
Julia Gillard
As many of you know, fighting for access to a quality education for all has been central to my life and political career. That passion comes from personal experience. When my family migrated to Adelaide in the 1960s, my parents didn't know about the reputations of different suburbs and the quality of local schools. They just bought a house they could afford in an area that looked nice. Fortunately for me, that meant I was living in the right zone to go to some of the best government schools in in the state. As a result, I was conscious from a young age that I'd won a bit of a lottery. If my parents had settled elsewhere, my school might have been of lower quality and my whole life story could have been different. It was campaigning for quality education that took me into political activism and set me on my pathway to be Prime Minister. In my years post politics, one thing that's kept me connected to education campaigning while also deepening my understanding of its transformative power is being patron of camfed, which stands for the Campaign for Female Education. Longtime listeners will have heard that name before because in an earlier episode I interviewed the long serving CEO of Canfed, Lucy Lake. In this episode, I have the privilege of giving you an incredible personal perspective of camfed. My guest is Angie Muromiwa, who was one of the first girls to receive her education through camfed and she's now the organization's CEO. As you will hear in this conversation, Angie bubbles with joy and passion for changing the lives of girls in Africa. She is remarkable warm, funny and wise and she's got a hell of a story to tell. I'm sure you will love getting to know her and you will all be fired up about supporting girls education. Angie, I'm so delighted you're here. Thank you for coming onto a podcast of one's own.
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Angie Muromiwa
Oh, thanks so much Julia. I'm super excited to be here and doing this with you.
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Julia Gillard
Terrific. Now, 30 years ago, the Campaign for Female Education supported 300 girls in school in Africa and it had an income of $50,000. Today that support has extended to 7 million girls in five African nations. The graduate network of women leaders now numbers more than 279,000 and the income has grown to more than 100 million. That's a hell of a g journey and you've been at the center of it throughout that journey. So in telling the story of camfed, I definitely want to hear your personal story. And to start with you as a child growing up in Zimbabwe, Angie, can you tell me what life was like for you then?
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Angie Muromiwa
Oh, where do I begin? I was born the first in a family of five, so my parents were subsistence farmers, so so largely just growing enough for us to eat. And we were lucky when we had enough to eat for the whole season and the next season. So it was just, I think some call it peace and farming, but we're loving family and all of that. My parents were super proud of me and protective and all of that, but the reality of it is we just didn't have enough to the point that meeting school going costs was so out of our reach. You know, you don't start talking about do you have a uniform, do you have excise books when you don't even have enough to eat. So just going through primary school was a struggle. I remember working for my primary school teachers to get an excise book to write in. And for me, one of the things that's most memorable for me was when I was in primary school and you have not paid for the building levies for the school and then the officials would come and say, those who have not paid, you're not allowed to participate. This lovely kind teacher would say to me, oh, actually Angie, I think you needed to go to the bathroom. So what would happen is I would go there and just hide until they are gone and then somebody would be sent to come and call me back in the classroom. So those are some of the struggles. But I was so lucky there was still a school that I could go to. But definitely life could have been easier and better. And all that changed when at the end of primary school, comfort was just getting introduced into my community and I was selected for support to go to secondary school. So for the first time I had all the school basics that I needed. Decent shoes, decent clothes, excise books and stationery that I need to write, menstrual products that I need. And nobody's asking me to go and hide in the bathroom anymore. So I had all of that provided and I could learn in Peace and without fear. And that's when everything changed for me.
- [06:11]
Julia Gillard
It would be shocking to many people listening that your experience was you couldn't go to school unless you could pay and your family couldn't pay and hiding in the bathroom and all of that. If I can take you to that time as a primary school student, before you got to learn about Cam fed and get camp fed support, I mean, did you think then as a young girl, you know what, what your life could be? What was your vision for your future life given you were struggling to just be in primary school and did your vision have a very gendered element to it? Do you think you saw your future very differently from young boys your age?
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Angie Muromiwa
It's. It's amazing how audacious hope can be. There was nothing going very well for me to think that I could land where I am today. So what I'm doing now, being the CEO for the very organization that supported me to go school, was something that I had not been exposed to. So it wasn't part of my dream. But what I knew I wanted then is I always said I want us to have a better life. And for me, better life looked like would have enough food to eat. I do not want to keep hearing my mom cry because every time we, for example, did not have the resources we needed to go to school and would come back home, I knew my mother would be crying at night. She would wake up in the morning and just say, oh, my migraine, my headache. But I wasn't stupid, I knew. So I would say I would want my mom to be happy. And this is just a bit of history with my mom, Julia, because my mom had dropped out of school at grade six as well. So I think for her she was seeing history repeat itself. My grandmother dropped out grade five. My mom, grade six. And fortunately or unfortunately, my grade six teacher was my mom's grade six teacher. So I was also privy to the other version of what. And he kept saying to me, you know how bright your mom would be. She could be minister of anything right now and unit. So I had an opportunity to dream and think there could be something different and better. But there was no sufficient exposure to tease it out on what it would look like. I knew what I would not want. I didn't want the hunger, I didn't want the struggle, I didn't want the despair. But what that different could look like, I didn't have sufficient exposure to shepherd.
- [08:49]
Julia Gillard
That's fantastic that you had that audacious hope. Even as a young girl then can you tell me about the moment that you first learned about camfed? I mean, I'm presuming that you were coming to the end of primary school and you were thinking to yourself, this is probably it. My family can't afford to send me to secondary school. And then how did you learn about camfed? How did that come about?
- [09:13]
Angie Muromiwa
I remember that very vividly in my later years of primary school. I had no doubt that this was going to be the end of the road because there was a secondary school close to my primary school. So I knew about the costs of the secondary school. I knew about how many books I'd seen people go to secondary school with. I knew about the decent clothes, uniforms that they needed and there was no way my family could meet that. So I knew all of that. So the young girl that I was had resolved that this was my lot, my education would end at primary school. But this whole stubborn hope had said, I am not going to go silently, I'm going to leave primary school with a bang. So I remember just for every exam, for every test, I would cry if I failed one thing or two things. I was like, I'm gonna my way through primary school. So, true to form, my final results for primary school, I had the best possible results. It was straight A's because I was like, I'm going to drop out, but I'm going to drop out with the best possible results. So I had not only the best possible results. For me, it was the first time the primary school had those results. It was the highest nationally. So it wasn't just a celebration for me, it was a celebration for the school, for the district, for everybody. So this was at the time I also got to know about comfort. So I had gone to the school to collect my results. So you would come from the village and there would be announcements, you know, you need to come so, you know, words of mout. So I had to go to school. But come on, the school has just broken the record. Everybody in the village already knew that somebody at the school has broken the record, but nobody knew who. So the school had invited other parents from the community and everything. So I was told, you need to come and collect your results at this time. So for me it was just, oh, this is the normal. So I went to the school and I got there and, you know, all these parents and anyway, they had already leaked the news and everybody was like, oh, congratulations, congratulations. I got my slip for the results. So it wasn't even an official thing, though. The school would write somebody's name, write your grades per subject and stamp it to show official. You know, I saw the paper and I just. Because it was the A's would be written as ones. And I saw a straight line and I was crying. That was the part I just started crying. And everybody was so convinced. She's crying because she's passed, she's happy. But Julia, for me, this was like, I've done it. This is the end of the road. But even my results cannot give me access to secondary school. So it was both. I was elated I had done it, but I was so furious and angry and broken that there was no more I could do. So that's when the school head was like, oh, congratulations, you've done this, and whatever. And then he even said to me, like, so it's good you're going to go to secondary school. There's this organization. I didn't hear all of that. So my first introduction of comfort, it didn't sink to the point that three days later, because I was then asked to bring my parents, that's when it dawned on me. But I will be honest with you, for weeks after that, until I was in school with the basics that I needed, I just thought, I'm in a dream. There is no way somebody like me really could go to secondary school anyway. So that was my context of being introduced to comfort. It was just too good to be true. I just kept thinking, maybe I'll wake up and this is not real.
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Julia Gillard
That is at the same time the most beautiful story and the most worrying story because. Because if camfed hadn't turned up in your village at that moment, then you, as the brightest girl, record beating your school, best results nationally, you could have been denied the chance to go on to secondary school simply because of poverty. If there hadn't been this alignment of the stars with Camp Fed entering your village, your world at that moment.
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Angie Muromiwa
Yeah. And Julia, this is part of the tragedy of my story too, right? So I got my chance, I got my brag. But within the same school, I had colleagues who I used to compete with academically who were coming from similar backgrounds. So, you know, you'd know if I was not first, this person would be first or second and whatever, they did not get the same chance that I got. So just talking about what I could have become, the tragedy for me is that they are living, breathing friends who embodied what I could have become right now. So that's for me the tragedy and the perils. And that's what gets me to do what I do. Because it's like you rightly say, the stars aligned for me, they didn't for my friends. And our lives could not be any more different.
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Julia Gillard
And so you see in that friendship group the ongoing impact of poverty and lack of advantage and injustice. Absolutely. And injustice. I mean, looking back on those secondary school days, you know, campfed not only supported you to go to school, you actually went to boarding school. And so you were supported with, you know, food and all of that, the things that we just often take for granted, but for you was such an opportunity. And in some ways, you know, as a young girl with that opportunity, it would be understandable if you'd thought to yourself, I've come up trumps, I'm the real winner here. And yet I've heard you speak about that secondary school phase in your life and it almost seems to me like you had some form of survivor's guilt that whilst you had this tremendous opportunity, you were weighed down by the fact that others didn't. Can you talk to me about that girl, that 14, 15, 16 year old girl, how she was feeling?
- [15:56]
Angie Muromiwa
Absolutely, Julia. It was a rollercoaster. So, you know, I'm coming from a place where I thought, this is it, I'm not going to proceed to secondary school. I get this very amazing opportunity, you know, where I've got what I need for school. And comfort is supporting me to go to one of the good schools in my community. This is a school which is in my community within 20 kilometer radius from my home. But none of the people from our village would go to that school because we could not afford to be in that school. The cost was way too high. So you can imagine the whole also status within that school. But, but this is a school that provides quality education that every child is entitled to, but we were not accessing it because of that. So I tell you for me to go to school. So Comfort provided all the basics, but my mom had to sell maize that we had in the house, the balance of it, to then buy me the expected toothbrush, the small, small toothpaste that we could afford, the blankets that I needed for me, I was so what will everybody else eat when I'm gone? Because they just sold the maize. And what happened to my friends who left, like, who could not get the chance? We left school and unfortunately one of the girls that I was in the same class with immediately got married to an older man. To be honest, not married. For me, there's a war story around that, around the abuse of it and whatever, but she wasn't going to school anymore. So for weeks I had a lump on my throat, like, why me and why not them? Do I deserve this? Can I ever repay all this kindness? What if I fail? What if something happens to me? Is this worth it? Am I sure that I want everybody to pay so painfully for this? So, you know, I've got the amazing opportunity, but I just can't own it. I couldn't. It was so traumatizing that I would go to the school dining room to eat. And I can't swallow because I'm thinking, I'm here eating. But my family sold the food to get me here. So how do I justify all of that? What is my brother eating? What is my young sister? What is. So, you know, all of those questions. So I'll tell you, like, how I got just out of it. It's, you know, stars aligning again. So after three weeks, I was not sleeping, I was crying, I was anxious. And you get into a classroom where most of the students can afford it. Fortunately, you know, like, we're 21 of us, but we're still within a school of other students who could afford it. So you could see where you don't have it. But I wasn't even worried about what I didn't have. I just didn't feel I belonged in there. So this one teacher came into class and he basically just said, you know, I know that there are students in this class who are being supported to stay in school by people who are not their relatives. And I want to tell you this one thing. When I come into this class, I see students. I don't see your parents, I don't see their wallets. I teach students, so I don't come to you and I say, I'm going to talk to students whose parents can afford it and whatever. So don't let anybody in this class convince you that you are less than because their parents have more or less or you don't. I don't care about your parents. You are my students. So you sit here and you learn from me because you belong here. You have a right to be here. So survivor's guilt is real. I survived.
- [19:49]
Julia Gillard
You definitely survived. And you got to the end of secondary school. And once again, for many people hearing this story, they would be thinking to themselves, that's a moment of huge celebration. And yet you've already described to us the weight of expectations on your shoulders that you've put on your own shoulders. And presumably your family and community was also putting on your shoulders. You know, you were the special girl you'd had this remarkable opportunity. You were supposed to come back and change things. You know, how did that feel as a very, very, very young woman? I mean, you came out of secondary school, you're still a teenager, you've got your whole life ahead of you, and you've already got what feels like the weight of the world on your shoulders.
- [20:41]
Angie Muromiwa
I could just turn that question back on you and say, how did it feel to become the first female president of Australia? Because that's it, right? So you are in this rural community where girls like you don't go that far. And not just don't go that far, but don't get the opportunity that you got in the school that you got it from. But you are the gladiator, the unicorn. Everybody is like, you are where we are not. This should be easy for you now and for you. You also feel you all sacrifice so much for me. What do I have to show for it? So it's not just societal expectations, it's also your own expectations to say, what do I have to show for my plus investment in me and how do I survive? And the beauty of how comfort supported us and how comfort still supports girls is you are supported as a whole group. So at my school, we're 21. So at this point of graduating from high school, that's when we were all brought together, right? And I didn't realize that there were girls from all over the country. We were over 400. So you get into a room with other 400 unicorns like yourself, people who are the first to go that far. So when we got into that room for the first time, everybody was like, you too? You too. And he says, so how did you get here? And it's amazing how you might never have met each other, yet have some very uniform experiences of exclusion, of getting an opportunity, of survivors guilt, of having these audacious, ridiculous dreams about what you can become. But we didn't just get to that. We started crying. There was a pity party. Everybody was, you know, where you say, I thought I was alone. So. So there was that war, crying and tears and everything. But for me, the turning point was after we had cried, after we had hugged, after, these are 400 young women who had never met each other. I need to emphasize that there was that moment where we said, what do we do with this privilege and this platform and this opportunity that we got? We are not where we should be. Like, you know, we are still girls graduating from a poor family. We have got something added on. But, you know, from my Home. We still had Ethan Flows. Our house was still raining. Like, no, when it rains, it was better to be outside of my family home than inside because the roof was terrible. So it was still all of that. But you've got all the potential to do something more and better with your life. So we asked ourselves, so what do we do with this? We agreed on three things. 400 of us in that room. Number one, we need to go and talk to the other girls who are like me when I joined secondary school. We need to talk to them about how do they use this opportunity because we got ours. So we need to tell them so they can also use their opportunity and probably have less time in the survival guilt, limbo opportunity. That was one. The second thing was, how do we help each other? Because right now, yes, we've come through high school, none of us had any idea around, how do you apply for university, for college, where are the forms? Where do you go to? Because there was no precedence in our community, everybody didn't go that far. The only person you could go to probably at times were the teachers. Some of them had gone on alternative routes, so they didn't know all of that. So how do we support each other as we go to the next stage of our lives? So we formed this peer network around, if you see a job advert, please, how do you make sure I also see. And this is a time of snail mail. Took 14 days for the letter to come. But we agreed if you see something, make the other one know. There were no mobile phones. So the whole issue around peer support network, how do we help each other navigate? And how do we help each other navigate grief, loss, tension, expectations, all of that about us. And then the third thing we agreed on that day was it's not enough for this to just end with us. How do we pay it forward? And we're not calling it pay forward for us, we're saying, how do we plow it back? What do I do? And we started with something very basic. I've got a decent uniform. I was using a decent dress. Some child needs it with joint uniform. 1. Can I give them my old dress so they can use it? I've got exercise books I haven't used. Can I give them? I've got pages in my book that I have not. What do I do? That's how we started our karma philanthropy, which right now, on average, every girl supports at least three other girls financially to go to school. But it started with how do we recycle what we had, but that 400 group of young women you think is 278,000 young women across Africa. So we dealt with our expectations and turned them into agency and movement. And only Boost Mobile. Boost Mobile will give you a free year of service. Free year when you buy a new 5G phone.
- [26:06]
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- [26:24]
Julia Gillard
It's fantastic hearing you tell your story and to know that today the elements that made such a huge difference for you, and it's certainly a reflection of all the work that you've put in in the years since. The elements that made such a difference for you are the elements that can fed is based on today. So it's still supporting girls to go to school, but through the Camma Network, through the Alumni association, the girls who have been supported, who have become women who are out there in the world, there's the sisterhood between them that enables them to support each other at that key transition in life and then to give back and on average support three girls each. It's just such a remarkable thing. I'm conscious though, maybe there are some people listening who are thinking, why is it all about girls education? Why does it need to be about girls education? Because we do know that there are hundreds of millions, unfortunately, tragically, hundreds of millions of children around the world who don't get to go to school. And whilst they're disproportionately girls, there are also boys who don't get to go to school. So why focus on girls education?
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Angie Muromiwa
My issue is, why not?
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Julia Gillard
Well said.
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Angie Muromiwa
Why not? So this is the thing, right? Comfort works in communities where on average, 5% of girls from the most marginalized families get to complete secondary school, only 5%, which means 95% of them never get to complete high school. I'm talking about secondary school. And that's the injustice. So we work within systems that are tagged against girls. It's institutionalized, to borrow your word, misogyny, where there is a deliberate blindness or consciousness to the disadvantage that girls face. So we focus on girls because we cannot be neutral on the disadvantage that girls encounter. We are an organization that believes in justice, in education for every child. But we realize that girls are disproportionately affected. And if we can introduce solutions that enable such a constituency of our population, the girls to go to school, to stay in school, to thrive, to become leaders that Same system can work for every other child, and that includes boys. So we focus on girls because they are the hardest hits. So if you can have the hardest hit solution, it can work for everybody else. So it's not about either or. We are choosing to go to the deep end, to the place where very few go, where in schools that we work, girls are three times less likely to drop out of school. And that magic solution we introduced in those hardest hit, forgotten hidden areas are being made national programs because, yeah, we have the magic wand now, and this is what can be done for every other child. So, yeah, why not girls education? Why not go to the deep end? If you're gonna do this well, we're gonna do this very well.
- [30:00]
Julia Gillard
And you do do it. You do do it so well. And from personal experience, I can say you do it with a lot of joy. Because in my capacity as patron of CampFet, I've got to attend meetings with you. Meetings in Africa where women who have been supported by campfed come together. There's always singing and dancing, both of which I'm extraordinarily bad at. But singing and dancing and joy, Judgment.
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Angie Muromiwa
Julia, we don't judge you.
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Julia Gillard
Thank goodness for that. I wasn't voted out of the meeting on my dancing skills. Thank goodness. And there's not only joy, there's ambition. I mean, I've met young women through Cam Fed and the Alumni association who, you know, they are determined to change their nation, change the world. I am expecting that I will see some of them become leaders of nations in Africa. It is just so remarkable to see and experience that joy.
- [31:03]
Angie Muromiwa
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So for me, this is. It's beautiful to see what comfort makes possible. No bias there, like, straight up. And this is something that's echoed by the communities that we work with, because there is something really audacious and bold about going to the hardest hits and making it work. And the level of support that that generates in the communities is amazing. So, you know, we're working in communities where 5% of girls would be completing school from those marginalized families. When you get the first group through, when communities see Fiona, who was a vendor, like vegetables vendor, become a lawyer, when they see Runyara as a medical doctor, or when they see Yvonne, who they were all saying, oh, you know what? The father has only got two girls. What can come out of that family? When they see Yvonne drill a bow at a family home, build a more permanent house, have all this, and see even Yvonne's father's status in the community when they See that? It's amazing how communities rally around that because for us, we don't go for superfluous show of impact. They are real girls and young people that the community themselves selected for support and worked with us together to see them come through. So there is, it's a point of celebration for everybody, for everybody in the community. So you can go to a community in Malawi. I remember like when I was a year ago when I met with one of the traditional leaders and he was telling me, oh, you know, the nurse at this hospital who is responsible for midwifery, you know, she's one of our girls that we supported together and that magistrate. So I'm just saying, when you've got a traditional leader who knows the girls by name now, young women who knows what they are doing, it is that transformative is that, that I continue to celebrate. And you say, you know, we hope one of them will be, you know, heads of state. You know, that's not far fetched because 20% of our confederate association members right now hold either local, national and international leadership positions. And these are girls who are coming from a community where only 5% were completing secondary school. I, I have a dream. We are just warming up.
- [33:36]
Julia Gillard
And in just warming up, you became CE of camfed at the start of last year. So Lucy Lake, who has been a guest on this podcast, was the CEO and guided Camfed for basically 30 years. And you've worked alongside her and then become the CEO. Can you just tell us a little bit about that journey? I mean, it's a wonderful story of being a girl assistant and now ending up as CEO and your ambitions in this position?
- [34:09]
Angie Muromiwa
I carry the weight of responsibility for this position. So I believe I hold it in trust for the girls and of course, boys.
- [34:29]
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- [35:03]
Angie Muromiwa
Who are excluded from education. For me, it's how do I bring my lived experience, the lived experience of my sisters, like the over 278,000 young women in the Comfort association, how do we bring that to shape the solutions that enable us to be able to support? And when I say us, I mean just the world. I mean everybody that enables us to Support more children in this century to be able to get into school, succeed, and find their own path, find their own freedom. Not just more girls, not just more boys, but more children. And how do we support them better? And how do we support them now? You know, how do we all come together to ensure that we are not asking them to wait their turn and ask them to say, oh, we are prioritizing this one as if they don't matter. So for me, it's all coming from that as an organization. For us, we are looking at, within the next six years into 2030, into supporting an additional 5 million more girls to go to school. Just to put this in context for the past, you know, to the point where we are now, like end of last year, we had supported 7 million. So we did that in seven years. We want to do that in the next six years. That's how fast, that's how bigger, that's how better we want to be able to do it. But we're not just doing that as an organization. I spoke to you earlier about how we are working with governments now to be able to adopt this magic solution that works with most marginalized child. How do we make it work for every other child? So, for example, our girls like our learner guides program, right? Which is our accompaniment model. This is where young women were graduating from our program with lived experience, go back to their former schools, trained and supported, right? To say, this is the curriculum and all that to accompany other learners so that we optimize the number of children that are completing school. They don't just accompany girls, they accompany all children to navigate a system which needs further improvement to enable every other child to go to school. So for us children that are not completing, it's not children's fault. There is something about the system that is not sufficiently designed to allow them to go through. So how do we accompany them through that system now? So that's what we're doing. And this is the lenderguard model that's being adopted across all the countries that we work with. So every other child is going to get that opportunity to get somebody who can walk them through their journey in high school. And it came from our experience of how do you support Angie to deal with those survivors, guilt and all of that through school? What does comprehensive support look like? How do you bring communities to support children? Because this is another misunderstood thing, right, where there's some twisted belief that communities don't want their children to go to school. Our work has proved. No, that's not true. So how do we take that at scale? So, yeah, we're not folding, we're not parking. We're looking at, how do we do this? Bigger, how do we do this faster and how do we do this now?
- [38:17]
Julia Gillard
Bigger, faster and now I love it. Now there are people listening, I'm sure, who are thinking to themselves, how can I help? How can they help?
- [38:26]
Angie Muromiwa
First and foremost, I always want to say, try and understand as much as you can about girls education. This is not a revenge move by feminists, it's justice. This is so essential. It's important to understand what is it that makes girls education so central. It is centered on how do we ensure that education is a route to agency and leadership is a route to justice, justice in social justice, political justice, economic justice. We need to think about girls education within that context. So I'd say, please educate yourself within that, then. Absolutely. Invest in the next girl in the next boy who is out of school to stay in school. Because we can't talk communities to death. We need to invest financially. It's such basic things as a writing pen or a notepad or sanitary wear that will help a girl to be able to stay in school. So direct investment in that. And please go to our website. Right. Comfort website. There are all these ways of supporting it, just $150 to support one girl for a year in secondary school. But what that can do, the multiplier effect of that for the community is massive. So please join our sisterhood. We have got a host, Global Sisterhood now for supporting. I wouldn't say Global sisterhood, but also movement for everybody who wants to do something about making this world a better place, girls education is the place to do it in because it will stretch you and whatever solution you come up with from there can work for everything else.
- [40:15]
Julia Gillard
I really want to emphasise that point about going to the website and the website address is in the show notes and looking at the incredible work that can Fed does. And if you are able also to make a donation, US$150 a year can keep a girl in school.
- [40:34]
Angie Muromiwa
In secondary school.
- [40:36]
Julia Gillard
In secondary school. I mean, obviously people would be thinking to themselves, gee, if I was trying to support, to keep a girl in, have to be donating thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. And you know, my family and I can't afford that. But US$150, if I do a very quick and dirty calculation in my head, you'd sort of add 50% more to put it into Australian dollars. So call it 225 Australian dollars. Around that, you know that I think people will be startled that that kind of money can make such a huge difference to a girl's lives.
- [41:16]
Angie Muromiwa
It does.
- [41:16]
Julia Gillard
And I know from personal experience that this investing in camfed, donating in camfed, makes a great gift for friends. You can get them sent a canfed email so that they know for Christmas or whatever, instead of buying them something they probably don't want and probably don't need in. In their name. You've invested in a good future.
- [41:41]
Angie Muromiwa
Absolutely. And just to also bring the multiplier that I mentioned earlier for every girl that you support in Comfort. That's why I talked about our Comfort Association Network. On average, every girl supported through school by Comfort also financially supports the education of at least three other girls every single year. And this is financial support, but they provide, on average, accompaniment to 25 other children to support their completion of education. So this is a gift that will keep giving you, set in motion what I call is a perpetual motion machine of more educated girls. More. And all of that. So I just wanted to be able to emphasize that this is, to be honest, I think the most beneficial investment with the greatest return.
- [42:29]
Julia Gillard
Yeah, it's an exponential model of change. Every girl invested in goes on to become a woman who supports women, more girls. And on it goes, and on it grows. It's fantastic. Angie, we could talk all day, but our time together is coming to an end. And at the end of the podcast, I like to use a Virginia Woolf quote, because, of course, this podcast is named for Virginia Woolf. And Virginia Woolf says, I shall go gently behind her to be at hand with my curiosity, to comfort her when she bursts out in a rage and thinks I am alone. Do those words resonate with you?
- [43:10]
Angie Muromiwa
I think she wrote them for me. She wrote them for me. She wrote them for everyone out there who is. Do you call it pregnant or agitated with, I want the world to be a better place or I would like this to happen for me. It speaks so much to our confident association network because the reason why we all came together was how do I come behind other girls like me's vision of the future? How do I hold that space to enable them to find themselves to do what they need to do and go where they need to go in a manner that doesn't interfere with them, but that they never feel isolated or alone? So it's true for everybody who is trying to make the world a better place, because if you're really trying to do it and you're doing it very well, it can be very isolating. And if you don't find yourself questioning yourself, you're not doing it audaciously enough. So it's a little profound around peer support networks, around sisterhood or whatever. Some people call it tribe, some call it village, some call it community. You need that support, particularly for the moments when you feel like, who do I think I am? But that's the thing with purpose, Julia, that for me, I always say it feels like a fire shut in my bones. You can't walk away from your passion, from this is possible. I know this world is possible. You can walk away from that without feeling like our best. But when you do that, you need so that court for me is for me.
- [44:50]
Julia Gillard
A fire starts in your bones. I love that and I've really enjoyed it conversation. Angie, thank you so much for this conversation and for everything that you and can fed do. You really are changing the world. Thank you.
- [45:02]
Angie Muromiwa
And thank you for translating, for setting the bar that high. We can stand and talk about misogyny without shame, without hesitation, without all of that because we stand on giants shoulders and you that one giant for me. So we keep on keeping on. We're getting there. Every day we get closer. So thank you.
- [45:23]
Julia Gillard
Thank you.
- [45:28]
Podcast Narrator
A Podcast of One's Own is created by the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University, Canberra, with support from our sister Institute at King's College, London. Earnings from the podcast go back into funding for the Institute, which was founded by our host Check Julia Gillard, and brings together rigorous research, practice and advocacy as a powerful force to advance gender equality and promote fair and equal access to leadership. Research and production for this podcast is by Becca Shepherd, Alice Higgins and Alina Ecot with editing by Liz Keene from Headline Productions. If you have feedback or ideas, please email us at giwlng. To stay up to date with the Institute's work, go to giwl anu edu au and sign up to our updates or follow us on social mediaulanu. You can also find A Podcast of One's Own on Instagram. The team at A Podcast of One's Own acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. Thanks for listening and we hope you'll join us next time.
- [46:59]
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