Ending poverty in Africa motivational speech by Kimmie Weeks
you caught me back sir bottom well
you’ll get the real speech
and
it’s so good to be here today you know
when I go to these conferences and
meetings quite a bit and I and I speak
in and some events you go to it’s like
there’s no passion in the audience and
it’s like I walk in as a speaker and I’m
like jeez I need someone to motivate me
because there is nothing and then
yesterday as I walked into the room I
was just so amazed by the passion and
the spirit and the energy I was like
this is a group of people I want to
spend my life around and I’m just so
happy I want to give thanks to a sprite
and Laura and all the people and Charlie
and everybody at hub who’s given me this
opportunity and the work you’re doing
when I first heard the name humanity
unites brilliance I said this is just an
incredible name I want to meet the
people who came up with this because the
concept of that the possibility of
brilliance being United with humanity to
change the world is what’s been absent
for so long we live in a period where
our world has both the resources the
technology and the know-how to end world
poverty but unfortunately we also live
in a point of time when at no other
point in history has there been so much
suffering and pain and hunger think
about that for a moment and era when we
have the technology to end world poverty
but also an era when we see the most
human suffering in history that has not
ended because humanity did not unite
with brilliance until now and change is
about to happen
so for me it’s a sheen when I when I
think about that and the knowledge that
so much can be done to end world poverty
and I and I believe that hub is working
to break this stronghold that together
we can say no more to hunger and
together we can say no more to poverty
and we can say no more to disease and
that no more should children go to bed
hungry and no more should children fight
in rebel armies who should be in school
but it can only happen if we stand
together as one people realizing that we
have power in numbers that we can do so
much that the images that we see in the
media of children who are going without
hunger having the image in your mind
that some mother somewhere is sitting
there and watching their children die
from hunger imagine the pain that a
mother or father would go through
sometimes we hear the numbers of people
who die from poverty and disease and
it’s so easy to sit there when we see
that millions of people are dying and
it’s just the statistics but imagine
that each in that million or two million
are kids that have memes that have
parents that had destinies that are
being sniped away from them by something
that they had nothing to do with these
could be our great statesmen these could
be the people who invented the cures or
invent the cures for cancer and
Alzheimer’s and diseases that we’re
struggling to find cures for but we’re
not finding because they’re probably
dying with the children in Africa and
Asia and we have to make that stop to
change our world it passed the sky
you know every every time I sit and I
say to people that I have a vision I
have a strong vision for the world I
have a vision of a world where no child
is going without health care I have a
vision of a world where there’s no more
dying babies or starving elders I have a
vision that no longer of a world that no
longer cries from hunger but she it’s
tears of joy when mothers in Africa can
unite with mothers in Europe and mothers
in Europe can unite with mothers in Asia
for children and mothers in America can
no longer sit there and say Africa is
too far away but can say the sisters in
Africa are my sisters their children are
my children and I will do everything to
help them it’s a world that’s so
possible and I wonder if we can all
share this vision if we can all taste
the joy if we can grasp the possibility
of this new world can you believe that
this is not just the dream this is not
just a utopian situation but it is a
real possibility I know they’d like you
to believe that there’s no hope they’d
like you to believe that Africa is going
to keep going under in Africa will never
rise again they’d like you to believe
that we as people are weak and can do
nothing that we have to depend on
governments and that the only hope for
the world comes from super power and
powerful governments they’d like you to
believe that that’s the message that the
mainstream media takes every day I stand
here today to tell you that they’re
lying I stand here today to tell you
that we have real strength and real
power
and that strength lies not in
government’s but it lies in individuals
they do not want us to realize this
power because they know they know that
when people unite as one we will be far
more powerful than any superpower and
far more powerful than any multinational
government we are strong my friends I
think and I truly believe that if we
open our minds we can truly awaken
brilliance not just for the people here
in the room but the message must go out
and must go out across California it
must go out across Washington DC it must
go travel to Europe it must travel down
to Africa everywhere people should be
awakening brilliance in Charlie I
challenge you that is events should just
be happening in the US we need to take
it everywhere even in the villages that
we’re impacting everybody should be
awakened
you know I believe that the challenges
we face are great the complexities of
ending world poverty or many and so many
people sometimes when I speak says this
guy don’t know what he’s talking about
he’s lost it that there’s no possibility
that he we can end poverty and and and
and it is just not possible I’ve seen it
I’ve seen extreme human suffering I’ve
seen extreme poverty but yet and still I
believe it’s true when I grew up in
Liberia during the 80s we we never
before thought we would see any of the
images of war in Liberia and the images
of children holding guns or any image of
children dying from starvation it never
we never taught that it would happen in
Liberia I remember in the 80s when I was
growing up we would the close as we came
to human suffering was watching on TV
and seeing the Ethiopian famine that was
happening in the 80s and I remember
looking on the TV I was 6 years old at
this point and looking on the TV and
seeing those images of starving children
with bloated stomach and I would say to
my mom you know how is it possible that
there’s children somewhere in the world
who are living in these conditions how
is it possible that there’s children
somewhere in the world who there’s flies
on their bodies and they can’t even move
those flies from their bodies and of
course my mom used to say well even more
reason for you to eat your food but we
never taught that it would come to us
and in 1989 I remember that a man named
Charles Taylor had announced the start
of the Liberian civil war and he said it
would be a grand revolution and
