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15 Dec

Tererai Trent – Soul shaking story

“I believe that once the seed of the imagination is planted in young minds, along with a thirst for achieving big dreams, there is no turning back” – says  Dr. Tererai Trent. A Zimbabwean-born academic is well known as Oprah Winfrey’s “all-time favorite guest”.

She’s famous leader of social changes

and her noble role is to support women around the world to educate themselves. Her story is full of trials and triumphs.

Nowadays she travels all over the world and splits her time between central California and Zimbabwe. In 2011 she established foundation to bring educational opportunities in her hometown. But let’s start form the early beginning.

Dr. Tererai Trent has grown up in poor small village in Zimbabwe. As a little girl she had to leave the school even though she did her brother’s homework and was excellent at school. But using her brother’s school books, she taught herself to read and write.

 In her village only men could read and count, and women could not do that. The strategy was to educate only boys because they could get job in mines and earn money to support their families.

All I wanted was an education.”

 If my grandmother had not been denied a right to an education, maybe she would have been the best gynaecologist in the world.” At 14 she was married and at by 18 she became mother of four children.

In her mind Tererai Trent was sure that people have not to be defined by their past.

All that had to happen was to meet somebody who could believe in her vision. “My grandmother would say, ‘see the colour of that imagination, feel the edges of those dreams’. Her “angel” was an American lady who came to her village and supported her to go to the USA to start her education.

She asked her a simple question:

 “What are your dreams?”

ISTANBUL, TURKEY – DECEMBER 12: Tererai Trent, founder of Zimbabwe Tinogona foundation, makes her speech during the seventh Sabanci Foundation Philanthropy Seminar at Sabanci Center in Istanbul, Turkey in December 12, 2013. (Photo by Berk Ozkan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

It was life-changing meeting. She wanted to fulfil her five dreams – to go to the USA, to get an undergraduate, a master’s and a Ph.D. and to work for better future of the girls in her community.

When she finally got on that airplane to go to America and the air stewardess said 16A, she had this feeling of déjà vu that she had been there before, because she  had spent hours and hours thinking about it.

It has to be clear that Tererai didn’t get it overnight.  Arriving in America Trent  faced with the problems as not having enough money to feed her children. She worked 18 hours per day at three jobs.

When she got her first full time job after completing her masters degree she, randomly, met with Jo Luck again, the woman who had told her all those years ago that her dreams were possible. “What are the odds? The universe is always there.”

In 2011 with the help from Winfrey, Trent built a school in her village in Africa so that young girls could receive an education. Oprah donated $1.5 million to rebuild the Matau Primary School in Dr. Trent’s village. It is interesting that about four thousand children have gone through the school already, almost 60 per cent of them are girls.

If we give education to women and girls, it’s the best investment a community can do.”

Her bestselling book The Awakened Woman: A Guide for Remembering & Igniting Your Sacred Dreams is evocative guide with nine lessons to support all women to understand that there are no forbidden dreams.

The main thing is to understand that there is a hidden power in them which could change the world.

 Women have the capacity to create and to transform and Tererai’s call to action “shines as a beacon of hope to women everywhere”.

I realized that I needed to give voice not only to my story but to give voice to women. I think our stories, they have the potential to heal not only ourselves but also the listeners. Many have been silenced. They can’t even tell their stories, and I’m thinking by telling my own stories, by writing about the silencing of women, other women will find their own voices as well.”

Dear ladies let’s show up our hidden power and start changing the environment around us :))