Dr. Tererai Trent: Reigniting Dreams and Empowering Women.
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2017
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Tererai Trent is an internationally acclaimed voice for women’s empowerment and education.
Hailed by Oprah Winfrey as her “all-time favorite guest,” Dr. Trent is an inspiring and dynamic scholar, educator, humanitarian, speaker, author, and the founder of Tererai International.
Born in a small village with no electricity or running water in Zimbabwe (then, Rhodesia), she was married in her early teens as was the custom, had four children by age 18 and suffered repeated physical abuse from her husband.
Still, she dreamed of a different reality, one that would break the generations-long cycle of poverty, early-marriage, illiteracy and disempowerment. Against all odds, she worked for 8 years to get her GED, and eventually earned a spot in college in the United States, taking her family with her, where some 20 years after beginning her dream of an education, she received her Ph.D..
It was her secret additional dream to not only change her life, but to do something for the greater good that turned this into an even bigger story. Trent's story ended up in the pages of the New York Times, where Oprah Winfrey discovered her remarkable story and deeply-passionate quest to help educate women. Oprah offered to partner with Tererai to return to Zimbabwe and build a series of schools that are now raising thousands out of poverty and giving them an education and the life-changing opportunities that go along with it.
Dr. Trent’s gripping story is both the topic of today's podcast, and is detailed her deeply-moving new book, The Awakened Woman – Remembering & Reigniting Our Sacred Dreams
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My great-grandmother when she was born, she was born into this relay holding this stick |
| 0:12.8 | which I call the baton. |
| 0:15.9 | This is the baton of poverty, the baton of oppression from a colonial system, the baton |
| 0:25.7 | of illiteracy, the baton of alien marriage and she's running with that baton. |
| 0:32.9 | She runs so fast she hends it over to my grandmother. |
| 0:36.7 | My grandmother holds that baton of poverty alien marriage. |
| 0:41.5 | She runs so fast with that baton she hends it to my mother. |
| 0:46.7 | My mother grubs that baton she runs with that baton and she hends it over to me and I'm |
| 0:55.2 | running with that baton ready to hend it over to my own girls when this woman, this |
| 1:05.1 | stranger comes to me and I feel like she said hold on. |
| 1:11.1 | You don't have to hend over this baton, you can believe in your dreams. |
| 1:19.5 | So it's difficult to describe how moving the conversation was with today's guest, Dr. |
| 1:26.5 | Tara I. |
| 1:27.5 | She grew up in a small village in what we now call Zimbabwe. |
| 1:32.2 | At a time where women and girls were completely excluded from education, from participating |
| 1:40.4 | in business and commerce and somehow found the will to what she calls no longer except |
| 1:49.5 | the baton of illiteracy and oppression and committed herself to a series of dreams |
| 1:58.3 | that by all accounts so many people would have seen as impossible. |
| 2:02.2 | And there were moments, critical moments along the way that allowed her to rise up to reclaim |
| 2:09.2 | her ownership of education and to eventually bring her entire family to the United States |
| 2:16.0 | for her true pursuit, a college degree of masters and eventually PhD and then turn around |
| 2:23.0 | and harness all of that for in her words the greater good and partnering actually with |
... |
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