I want to give a little background about my life as I tell the story.

I grew up in an Irish-Italian family. We were five kids. We grew up on a dairy farm, so we were well acquainted with hard work and developed a strong work ethic. My parents really valued education, and all five of us kids went to 12 years of private, Catholic school, and then onto the public university, mostly to get away from the work on the farm.

When you grow up on a farm, you realize that white color work is really the way to go. So everybody in my family, no one works on the farm. Everybody is in white collar jobs. I think it's fair to say that my brothers and sisters are pretty much all over-achievers and workaholics. So dairy farm work kind of does that to you. You're there every day, twice a day, never get a vacation.

But what that also led to was we had a family dinner every night at the same time every day, and a pretty strict ritual. And around our dinner table we had lots of debates. We learned how to really stand up for what you believe in, speak it out and don't be afraid to counter what that is, and try to use facts if you can.

My parents were wonderful people. My mom-- when I thought about my parents, how to share them with you, what they were, I realized that my mom really taught us how to live on a micro level, and how to deal with people one-on-one.

She is my greatest hero, and the kind of the person that you wish everyone could meet. She a living example of kindness, compassion, forgiveness. And ultimately unconditional love. She's the kind of person that if she walked into the room, no one would probably notice her. But if got on a bus and sat next to her, you would tell her your life story. She was just one of the kindest people I've ever met in my life.

She used to say things to us like you know, when you see somebody smile at them because it really makes them feel good and it doesn't cost anything. So do what you can to help people. She would say things like find the good in every person. She would never gossip. She absolutely did not do that. But she would say things like it's easy to find the negative things in people-- anybody could do that. But every person has fundamental goodness, and so no matter how bad the person is, find that goodness and tell them about it and it'll make them a better person.

She would tell us if we were in a store and there was somebody struggling with groceries, she'd always encourage us to run over and help that lady with her groceries. And she just taught us how to be nice to people one-on-one. She was just a really great person. I would always bring home friends from college to meet her. And I realized in college what an incredible person she was. And I wanted as many people as I could to get to meet her. And she was a great Italian cook. So I there was always somebody with me coming on holidays.

My dad, on other hand, he's the Irish, and he kind of gave us a vision of how to live on a macro level. He was really into politics, he was actually a small town politician, and he liked to think about policy and discuss world politics and the problems of the world, and he had a lot of solutions for that. He actually was an elected official. He was on the county board. He was a guy that he was very independent-minded. He owned two businesses-- he ran the dairy farm and he also ran a tree business. And he would say things to us like be a leader.

If we would come home with a goofy haircut or some weird clothes, he would always say why do you have your hair cut like that? And we'd say well, everybody has it, dad. It's the style, everybody has it. And if I heard this once, I heard it a thousand times. So if everybody jumped off a cliff naked, would you jump off the cliff too? And then he'd say don't follow a crowd, lead the crowd. Another thing he would tell us was you can be whatever you want to be, and you can do whatever you want to do, and don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do what you think you should do.

So we grew up with a lot of passionate character development in my family. It was an interesting family.

Other areas in my life that helped develop my character were because I grew up with my brothers, and there was a family down the road, they had three boys and a girl, too. So two girls, six boys. We became pretty good athletes. We did a lot of playing on the farm-- our farm was turned into every kind of athletic field you could imagine.

And when I got to eighth grade-- I know this doesn't sound like a big deal now, but back then it really was-- I was elected class president, and I was the first girl in the school history to be elected class president. And the same year I was elected the local forage club president. I learned how to do Robert's Rules of Order. And at an early age, I learned how to run a meeting, and I was given a lot of great leadership skill. I remember, not only were my parents really influential in my life, but lots of teachers and people.

I remember in eighth grade, one of my favorite teachers, Sister [? Lorencia, ?] one day I was leading a class meeting, and I was like this, and OK, who is bringing cupcakes next week? And I was kind of like that. And then from the back of the room I heard Sister [? Lorencia ?] say, Madame, President. I said, yes? Are you the president of the class? I said, yes. And she said, then stand up straight and act like it. Act like a president. And there were a couple of one-liners that Sister [? Lorencia ?] told me that I have never forgotten. And that is one of them. So usually at a podium I'm kind of like this. But I had a great chance to have some real leadership as a young person.

One of the things that I realized as I look back was that I had kind of a deep sense of justice from an early age. I remember about third or fourth grade I was on the playground and I saw one of my classmates, one of the boys, was kind of teasing a first grade girl. And he was kind of over her and she glasses on. He was calling her four eyes, four eyes, four eyes. And she was cowering under that.

And I remember just having this feeling well-up in me, like that has got to stop right now. And I went over to him and I grabbed some people, and I said-- and he unfortunately wore braces. And so to sort of teach him a lesson I started saying, hey, you think she's four eyes, well you're tinsel teeth, tinsel teeth, tinsel teeth. And in a few minutes I realized that everyone on the playground was now yelling at this guy. And I realized that there was going to be a big problem if those nuns came out and saw this riot going on. I realized that I started it, so I jumped up on the stoop and I told them, OK, everyone stop. He's had enough. And everyone stopped. And I-- all right, go back and play. They just dispersed.

And then I looked at him and he's crying. I jumped down, I said, hey, you know you just can't do that to people. And see how that feels? And oh yeah, you're right, that was really bad. I feel really bad. I said OK, well never do that again.

I walked away from that thinking, oh my gosh, first of all, I just didn't get in a lot of trouble that I probably should have got in. But what was more amazing to me was that I don't know why everyone started to follow that, and I don't know why everyone stopped when I told them to. But I realized, oh my gosh, that was something-- I was confused by it, I was actually frightened by it a little bit.

But what I realized, as I think on the actions of my life and some of the things I've stood up for, usually it's an underdog situation where the person who is hurt can't stand up for themselves. And it somehow drives me and it drives me to action. So that was one of the kind of things that I realized at a young age that I did have that capacity.

I also had a-- I love what you're doing on this-- oh, I just think that's great. One of the things that I realized about cross-cultural was that we grew up on a farm, but amazingly I had a lot of cross-cultural experiences as a kid. We lived in an area pretty close to a rural area that was African American, very poor. One of my friends at the school invited me to go to her house one night. I was the only white person that ever got invited to go to that area and spend the night. I said of course I would go.

It was an interesting ride to be on a bus with all black people. But when I got there I realized-- and they were very poor, much poorer than we were. But we had such a fun time, and I realized there is no reason to be afraid of African Americans. and my mom had a very good African American friend, and she would come to our house with her kid, and we would go to her house. And somehow I was able to grow up in an incredibly racially tense time thinking that there really isn't that much between black and white people.

Another thing that happened was we had foreign exchange students that would come, and there was an Italian student that one of the neighbors had. And my mom's parents were immigrants. So she could understand Italian but she couldn't recall it. And he knew English-- he could understand it but he had a hard time recalling it. So they would get together quite often and she would speak to him in English and he would answer her in Italian. I was fascinated by that. I just thought that was amazing that people could talk different languages to each other.

So basically growing up, I had some really amazing experiences. Then I got to work as an RN in the dorms at my university, and that was a really interesting experience interculturally too.

One last thing I just want to share about part of my character development was the team orientation that I run early on. Living on a farm, doing farm work, you have to almost always work in teams. And, of course, we did a lot of sports, and I got just playing a lot of sports in high school.

So I understood the incredible benefit of being on a team and working on a team and how much more a team can accomplish than an individual can.

My family was a good family but it was not perfect. We grew up with a measure of instability as my dad struggled with the pressures of raising a family. And he took solace by visiting the bars rather frequently. This led to economic problems in our family. We had a lot of bills that went unpaid, lots of days where electricity was shut off, the phone was shut off. Creditors were calling, commitments were compromised. And that did sort of put into me a fear that I sort of had this gnawing fear growing up that I would be impoverished, and that I would be homeless some day. It really was an irrational fear, but nonetheless I had it.

That fear was finally allayed. The first time I went to Tijuana, Mexico I was about 30 years old, and the youth pastor at our church had asked if I would be willing to go along on the team, help lead the team and do the translation. I found out what really impoverishment was, as we crossed the border from San Diego into Tijuana back in 1988. It was really a devastating experience.

That week, being there with real poverty, I realized that-- at the end of the week I was sitting around talking to some of the neighborhood ladies, and we were laughing and joking around, and the house was done. It was a good thing for that family. We got there, the house that they were living in was built out of sticks and Pampers boxes with a blue tarp. And when we left five days later it was a two-room house with a cement floor. That was a pretty big change for them.

Then we were having this great conversation and all of a sudden it hit me. I'm not afraid to be poor anymore. I'm not afraid to be impoverished, because impoverishment is really a lack of relationships. If you have a friend, you could live under any circumstance. That really moved me, that brought me to a wonderful sense of hope, actually. Which brings me to the theme today, which is hope, hope and leadership.

Hope is the belief that there will be a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Like most important, like hope is priceless-- it doesn't cost anything.

Aristotle called hope a waking dream. When the world says give up-- this is an unknown author, I found this on the internet-- when the world says give up, hope whispers try it one more time. Hope is the driving force which links dreams to action.

Why is hope so important to leaders? Well, without hope not much is ever going to be done. It takes leaders to get people to work together, to get things done. Everything falls and rises. Everything rises and falls on leadership, and leaders must have hope, and they must exhibit that to those who are following them. Most companies succeed or fail because of their leadership. Organizations, even whole countries, thrive or fall into ruin because of the leadership.

A leader must exhibit hope in order to motivate others; that their efforts will pay off. They must keep informed and constantly check that their motives are right. And they must act accordingly and lead others to do the same.

"Hope begins in the dark--" this is what Anne Lamott says-- "Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don't give up." Napoleon Boneparte saying, "A leader is a dealer in hope."

Why do we need so much hope? Hope speaks to fear, and it speaks to despair, and the world is full of both, and that's why we need leaders. We need leaders who will step up in crisis during times of great fear. Leaders need to be courageous, need to calm people with what they say. They need to speak truth in times of crisis; truth needs to be spoken, it needs to be remembered, what is the truth here. And they need to give direction. The greatest example I can think of for this kind of leadership is Rudy Giuliani during 9/11.

Rudy Giuliani was the mayor of New York that was-- he was actually a lame duck mayor. He had not been voted in. He not been re-elected because he was kind of a scrappy, harsh guy, and people just didn't like him. He was real black and white. He was an executor though. He got things done in New York-- crime went down under his administration. But people just didn't like his personality that much, he was a little too strong for everybody.

But when 9/11 came, Rudy Giuliani was the person who could speak to fear. He was incredible. He was tireless, and he continually spoke hope into New York City. He never became the favorite Mayor of New York City, but he was named the Mayor of the world.

Hope speaks to despair. Many leaders who are compassionate, that in desperate situations they'll come forth with care and love. They're the other center. They'll think about other people more than themselves, they'll sacrifice. And they'll seek the highest good of everybody around them.

Dale Carnegie said most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. Leaders have to speak to fear and despair. And lead people out of that.

When I first made that trip to Mexico, my husband, Doug, was finishing up his bachelor, and he did his final paper on-- it was called how to help the poor locally, nationally, and internationally. One of the things that we realized through that study was the immense amount of orphans in the world.

He did some research on different organizations and we decided at that time that we would not have anymore of our own children, that we would adopt from a third world country, preferably South America, we both speak Spanish. We also decided to sponsor a child from World Vision at that time. And we started to really dedicate much more of our lives to helping the poor. We went back every year to Mexico to lead teams to build homes-- we built about 20 homes there.

At the time I was running a photography business, Doug was running a computer business over the next 10 or 12 years. We got to a point in our life where we decided I should apply for a job as a missions director at a church, which I did, and started to work in Bella Vista Church here in Rockford, Michigan.

When I got here, our committee all took a class, a college level class, on the whole perspective of mission. In that class we learned that across the board philanthropically, our government, our churches, individuals, foundations, across the board, 2% of all giving, less than 2%, goes to the 98% poorest people in the world. And 98% of all philanthropic giving stays with the top maybe 6% richest people in the world.

We said, well that's not like us, because our church was very missions-minded. And we said, well, we're not like that. But went and did an audit of our missions budget, and sure enough, we spent about half of our money right in the Grand Rapids in the U.S., which I'm all for helping locally. I believe what George Bush said at the Ford Center the other day when he said, America's big enough to take care of its own problems and help the world. And I really think we are. I think we should because we're the leaders of the world.

We looked at our budget, sure enough, spent a bunch here in the U.S., we were supporting some missionary down in South America-- doesn't qualify for third world. Western Europe doesn't qualify for third world. And we had one guy in the Philippines. Guess how much of our budget he covered? 2%. And we could not believe it.

So we dedicated ourselves to this knowledge that we would keep all of our commitments-- we weren't going to cut off anybody. But we were going to spend any new money on the third world. So I started to travel there. and it didn't take a long time to find out that women were really suffering.

By the way, I just want to throw a couple of statistics out to you. In the world today there are about 6.8 billion people, give or take several million. And about three billion of them live on less than $2 a day. And that's the same $2-- it's called Purchasing Power Parity-- the same $2 that you can take to the store or to Starbucks or to McDonalds or to iTunes, and that's how much they have to live on to buy their housing, the food, their clothing, the medical care, the transportation-- $2 a day. Half the world lives on less than $2 a day.

And about one billion people in the world live on less than $1 a day-- they're called extreme poverty.

Now I was traveling around in these areas of the world where these people live, and I'm telling you, I was stunned at the plight of women. Women suffer so much more disproportionate than men. Women are 80% of the world's farmers. And I'm telling you, they're not the farmers with big tractors and combine. They work the ground by hand. Because women are responsible-- they have all the responsibility and none of the authority to feed their families every day.

And when we're talking about living in a place where there's no electricity, no running water, to provide food for your family means that you have to grow it, you have to go down to the river to get the water. Women in Africa walk an average of six miles a day to gather the water for their family's needs. You have to go gather the wood to cook the food that you just grew. So they get up before the sun comes up, and they go to bed way after it goes down, and they feed their family, and if there's any food left, maybe they get to eat.

As I was traveling around the third world, I would see this over and over again. Go into a village and all the men would be sitting around drinking tea, playing board games in the shade. And you wouldn't see a woman in sight. Then you would leave the village and there they are, in the fields, walking down to the river, big, heavy loads of wood of their back, carrying lots of water, carrying babies. I said to one of the nurses when we were doing a trip in Ethiopia.

I said, Edith, have you seen noticed this? I said, look at the men. And I said, look at the women. And she said, boy, Mary, I've lived here for 32 years, honestly, I never noticed this. And I said, why do you think it's like that? She said, I don't know, that's just the way it is.

And I finally came to my husband, I said, Doug, I just feel like a lot of people could do my job, but I don't see a lot of people helping women. And so I think I should dedicate the rest of my life's energy to that group, which I think arguably is the largest, most depressed group in the world. They don't have rights, they don't get to own land. Less than 2% of all land in the world is owned by women. They do 70% of the work in the world, and they make about 10% of the income of the world.

And the women in the third world-- and I just want to make a disclaimer here, I just want the guys in the room to know, I love men. I'm inviting you in to this injustice. One of the things I have learned is that the only way that people can get out of oppression-- there's two ways actually for people to rise up out of oppression. One is a bloody war where a lot of people die. Or those in power peacefully give over their power. I want to encourage the men in the room, you have power. You have power to change lives. And I invite you into this terrible injustice.

My husband's a huge part of this. He is a co-founder of SowHope. He is the co-founder. He's actually the founder, really. You'll see why in a second.

So I said to him, look, I think I want to go work for a place that's like World Vision, you know, targeting basic needs of people, but I want-- World Vision targets kids under five. And I said, but I want to work for an international organization, large scale national organization, but that does that to women, targets women on very basic, holistic, life-sustaining ways. And he said OK, I think you should. I think you should do that. Here's the green light, go head. Whatever city you have to move to, here's a computer guy, he could move.

So I started to look, and I researched for three months to find an international organization dedicated to women, meeting the basic needs of women. And do you know that in three months I could not find one. And there are hundreds of these for kids. And I thought well, I'm either the worst researcher in the world, or there is a huge void in the world. That made me very, very, very uneasy. I really started to say-- I could see this organization. I knew what it was supposed to look like.

And I remember praying one day and I said, God, you really need to get somebody doing these organizations. I felt like I heard God say, I have somebody. And I was kind of relieved, and then I got like this really bad feeling in my stomach. I felt like had heard God saying, well it's you. And I was like no, no, not me. Somebody who's qualified that knows what they're doing. I'm a photographer. But it became more and more-- we couldn't deny it anymore.

And finally I said to Doug, do you really think that we're supposed to do this? And he said, Mary, there should be hundreds of these. Let's start one, make it as simple as possible, and maybe people will copy us and we can get a movement going. And I said, how are we going to do that? We didn't have very much money. He said, I'll sell the land my parents gave me-- they had given him some land about 10 years earlier and we were kind of holding that for our retirement. And he said, I'll sell the land in Pennsylvania and we'll use that. You can quit your job and you could start the organization.

I said, OK. I said, I don't want to get to seven years old and think back and wonder should I have tried that? I said I'd really rather try it and fail. So that's what we did. Well, I haven't failed yet. I've tried.

That's how we started SowHope. And basically about a year into it I realized I don't know what the heck I'm doing. So I came to Grand Valley and got my masters in public administration. I came in, I think it was 2007, I graduated in 2010. So trying to start an international organization and get a masters program, I just about lost my mind, as you can imagine. But it probably kept me from going crazy. I got a lot of help here. I mean I loved the program here, the students, the energy. And this is part of the fruit of getting to come to Grand Valley. I love Grand Valley.

You know, Stephen Covey says-- he writes this book called The 8th Habit, and his final point is that to be really effective you need to find your voice and inspire others to find theirs. I think one of the the best examples I have of that in my life is I went to Ethiopia in 2000. A team was going there, we were building a school. And in a few days we realized that, well, the three women on the team, it really wasn't appropriate for us to be helping do the brick laying. So I went to the local pastor and I said hey, if you want to tell the kids in town or in the village after school they could come over and we'll do like a kids club at the church. He said, oh, they would love that.

So we went to the local paper store, stationary store, we bought a ream of paper and about 20 pens, and those were our craft supplies. But every night just came up with a program for the next day, we'd pick out a Bible story. We would tell the story, then we'd teach them how to do a drama. And by the way, drama in the third world on great, bible dramas because they still live like they did in the bible times. So when we did like the good Samaritan story, we had the guy beat up down there and everything, which they loved doing that. And we actually had a donkey. They actually put the guy on a donkey and we had a real donkey for the drama. It was awesome.

But we had two of the teachers from the local school came-- one was my translator, the other guys was reading music. We just had a wonderful time with them. About five years later I went back to visit the project to see how it was going and things like that. They asked me to speak in the church. So I stood up and I said, hey, anybody here from that group that was there. And about 15 kids raised their hands. So I said, I want to meet with you guys afterward.

So we went to a room, went back in the school, and I said OK, tell me your names and what you're doing. And they started to go around the room. And they would say I'm so-and-so and I'm studying to be a teacher. I'm so-and-so, I'm studying to be a nurse. I'm so-and-so, I'm studying to be a pastor. I'm so-and-so, I'm studying to be a politician. And every one of them, they're like 16 to 20 years old, they were all studying and going to be something.

And I turned to my translator, who was a teacher the first time, now he was the principal of the school. I said, Buru, is it normal that people this age in this village-- I mean this was a really poor village-- would still be studying? His eyes were wide. He said, Mary, this is highly unusual. He said, no, this is not normal.

So I turned back to the group and I said, hey, how is it that all of you are studying to be a professional? One of the guys stood up and he said, Mary, you told us five years ago that we were the hope for Ethiopia, that we should study and become leaders. And that's why we're all doing that.

I'll tell you, my first thought was, I said that? But I'm telling you, the power of speaking hope into people.

We just got a project from that same tribe asking us to support 11 girls to become full-time nurses. And some of them were younger sisters of the kids in that group. Everything just kind of comes around.

Our policy, our strategy at SowHope is to use local energies and local solutions to solve locals problems. What that means is that we have general areas, but we don't tell anybody what to do. We go and we find local leaders who have a history and a reputation of helping women. We ask them two questions. What are your dreams, and what would you do if you had more resources?

And I'm telling you there is never a lack of answers for that. It's always appropriate to whatever they can do. We had had the most amazing responses from our local leaders about how to fix the problems in their areas. And our local leaders, we kind of coach them, and we ask them to give us targets of how do they think they're going to impact.

Our partners have come back at 30% over their targets. They're very motivated through their projects. You know why? Not because we're paying them to do them, because it was their idea in the first place. Who is not going to make their project work? It's really a lot of fun. And it's incredible encouraging.

I want to conclude with some questions for you guys to think about. I'm really speaking to the students. And really everybody. I mean this fits everybody. But for you guys who are like in your formative years in becoming leaders, I want you to really ask yourself who you are. To thine own self be true.

Really think about what is your passion, what moves, excites, and energizes you? What keeps you up at night, late talking about or doing it? What would you argue about? Who would you fight for? What makes you stand up? What is your area of influence? Where are you leading now? What group is following you? Who do you care about? Who do you think about? And whose lives are you affecting?

If you can answer these questions, they will really guide you in how you should lead. I want to give you a couple of action steps to take. Be active in getting around influential people. It's a great thing that you're sitting in this room. Somebody had identified you as a leader. Sitting next to you are mentors. Use them.

This program is fantastic for building leadership. I think it'll take you a lot more years to figure out just what an incredible privilege it is to be in this room. And a responsibility. Read the books, use the bibliographies that are provided. I forgot to put one of my favorite books on there, They Call Me Coach by John Wooden.

Take responsibility whenever you can. If somebody asks you to do something and you can do it, step up and do it, especially if it's an area of your passion.

Serve humbly. Always think win-win and grow in your ability to influence. Develop your character by always reflecting on your motives of why you're doing something, and then adjust them. We used to always ask people going on the Mexico team. Why do you want to go in the Mexico team? I'd say just be honest, what your motive? And some of the motives weren't very good or some of them were. You know, they all want to travel. I want to get away from my parents.

And I'd say well, OK, those motives are all fine, but I'm going to tell you what our motives are on this team-- we have a purpose on this team and it was a church team. And I said, our motives are that we love God, that we love each other, and that we love the Mexican people when we get there. If we all live by those three things on this team, we'll be successful. We may not build a house, but we'll be successful.

And I'm telling you the teams that actually followed those things built fantastic houses. Love the Mexicans, we had tremendous relationships. I still go back every year and visit about 13 of the families to see how they're doing. It's been a tremendous experience to watch people grow up in poverty. I'm actually holding babies of babies I held once.

So develop your character and understand what's motivating you to do things. And if it's not right, just change your motivation. Keep doing it but change your motivation and make it right.

My final word, since this is the center of presidential studies, I'm going to quote Woodrow Wilson. "You're not here really to make a living, you are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world and you impoverish yourself if you forget that errand."

Everything rises and falls on leadership. Go and be the kind of leader that raises the bar; that raises the quality of life around those that follow you; that raises the good around you.

Somewhere, some group, or even just someone needs your unique style of leadership. Make the world a better place because of your life and efforts. Always do the right thing. And my friends, wherever they are in despair, let us hope. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

I don't know if we have time for questions, but I'll be glad to answer any questions.

Oh, and I did have that slide show if you still want to see it.

Do you have any idea-- has there been an increase in organizations that are targeting repressed women?

You know, after we started SowHope, Care International changed their vision to making women a priority. I'm not sure it's their only vision, but I think if Care had been doing what they're doing now, I probably would have done and worked for them. So I think they probably heard about SowHope and decided we better change our vision.

There are lots of organizations that do one thing, maybe internationally, like maybe they do microloans or there's an organization that might go into one country and be helping women as a focus. But what I was looking for was that kind of large scale basic care organization, which I do think there needs to be 10 at least of them in the world.

In the readings, [UNINTELLIGIBLE], it mentioned that you've had conversations with men about abusing their wives. I was just wondering-- I mean how do those conversations go and how do you-- I mean have you convinced anyone to stop? First of all, I don't tell anybody to stop abusing their wives. What happened there was we were in the Congo and we were going village to village and I was talking to women's groups who had been raped. After the third village, the guy that was taking us around-- he actually was a young guy. His dad was a local politician. He had set up all these meetings. And the dad told the son to come and tell me, as I came out of one of the huts, hey, tell Mary there's a group of men over here that they want to be talked to, too. She's ignoring the men and they're feeling neglected. So if she could come and talk to them that would be great.

And people are saying to me a lot, and I agree with this, if you want to change the life of a women in Africa, then you need to change the men. And my response is I totally agree with that. But you know what, really how much could a short, white, fat lady from Michigan do to change the minds of African men?

I said how about if I help women, and I just do that, and then somebody else comes along and talks to the men? Well, now this guy says come and talk-- I've got a group of men, come and talk to them. And my response was, well, what does he want me to say? And he-- do your thing. Just do your thing. And really literally waiting for me about where that table's out. There's like 20 guys waiting for me to come over and they want me to encourage them.

So I walked up and I said, well, I just want you to know we are an organization that promotes women because we feel like women suffer more than men. But we love men and we respect men. And I want to talk about respect.

And then I went into this thing about you can get respect two ways: through fear, or really through love. And when I talked about that I just said, you can get respect by coming home and beating everybody up, but when you come home, nobody wants you there, when you leave everybody's happy, and when you die there's going to be rejoicing. But if you learn this one little trick-- if you learn how to love your wife, love your kids and love your neighbors, then when you come home they'll be glad to see you, they'll be sad when you leave, and when you die your name will go down with honor.

And they liked it. The guy came up to me afterwards-- the son came up and said, my dad has never heard a message like that, and you are going to say that in every building that we go into. And sure enough. So I guess there is something a little, short, white lady from Michigan can say that.

You might want to briefly mention Bangladesh-- the woman was a coach.

I can't remember it.

One of the rules of the teams is you don't beat people up.

Oh yeah. When I first went to Bangladesh on one of our microloans they do a weekly training. The trainer was telling the women, don't let your husbands beat you. If they do then tell them to stop. If he won't stop, tell the group to tell him to stop. If he still doesn't stop then you tell me. And this trainer was about as tall as me, maybe like this, shorter than me.

So after the meeting I said, that was a great talk, but seriously, why would anybody listen to you? And I said, have they ever done that? And she said well, just two weeks ago, one of the guys here wouldn't let his wife come to the meeting. And so I went to him and I said you need to apologize to me, and he wouldn't do it. So some other men came-- husbands of other wives in the club-- and they took him out and they talked to him, and he came back and he apologized to her.

And I said, now why would he do that? She said, Mary, I have the power to pull the loans in this village. And if I pull the loans in the village, the economy here will collapse. So what happens if this one guy ruins it for everybody else? There's no way. The other husbands aren't going to allow it.

And what we saw-- we had a three-year program going, those clubs that had been going for the full three years, the husbands were extremely engaged with their wives and proud of their wives, and working with their wives. When you let the local people, the local leaders, move the culture, they can do it increments that's acceptable. If I go in and say, husbands stop beating your wives, and why should I listen to you? But when the local husbands are telling the other husband you need to stop this because all of our lives now depend on this, then you can move a culture slowly.

I'm a firm believer that-- I do not want to criticize-- I don't want to criticize men, I don't want to criticize culture, I don't want to criticize countries. I really want people to really start coming together. And when you start to tell people what not to do, it causes a lot of negative energy. And I think it can be better done by saying more positive kinds of things. I want to be able to get visas to go to countries, and so I'm not going to come against [UNINTELLIGIBLE] countries. And I actually-- Yeah, that answers your question?

It does.

One more question.

Starting a non-profit organization, it's an overwhelming task.

Well, it's really easy.

Oh yeah, sure. If you could just talk about what the first couple of steps you took to kind of get it going, get it off the ground.

Yeah, I pulled in a lady who was an executive director of an organization, and she was a board president of a multi-million dollar non-profit, and she helped me write the bylaws, and that was the first step. And she really guided me. And then along the way I kept getting more and more excellent guidance. And then when I took the degree here, that really helped too.

But basically you set the foundation. I told her I want the best foundation possible for this organization. I want this to go way beyond my life. And so as we went through the bylaws, we got to one that said, no conflicts of interest and who could be on board, and basically we got to the point with the discussion of anybody being paid shouldn't be on the board. And I said, well, I think I'm going to be paid because I'm probably going to be the first president. Well then, you really shouldn't be on the board, and neither should your husband. And I was like, well, are you serious, because we just gave up our whole future, basically, for this. Do you want the best organization possible?

Well, I'll tell you what she said. She goes I'm going to go home, you sleep on this and you can tell me tomorrow what you want. Well, I didn't sleep at all that night. And when she came back the next day I said I want the best organization possible, we'll write it in there. Nobody who is paid can be on the board. So I'm not even on my own board. I was on the board for like four hours when we founded it and then we named it. Doug and I were both on the initial board and then we turned it over that night to another-- we nominated a whole new board.

Thank you, Mary.

I don't know what to say from what I just heard. But I think I speak for all of us-- that was an incredibly moving presentation. You really are an inspiration. And when I think of the way you have founded an organization called SowHope, and I look at your heart, and you sow hope just by your presence. Well, thank you.