Ann Cotton interviewing Graça Machel at the Skoll Awards For Social Entrepreneurship

Speakers

• 
  Graça Machel

  Founder, Graça Machel Trust

  Graça Machel is a renowned international advocate for women’s and children’s rights and has been a social and political activist over many decades. She is a former freedom fighter and was the first Education Minister of Mozambique. Her contributions to the Africa Progress Panel, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group and the High-Level Panel on Post 2015 Development Agenda, have been widely appreciated. She is a member of The Elders, Girls Not Brides, Board Chair of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health, African Ambassador for A Promised Renewed, President of SOAS, University of London, Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, Board Chair of the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, President of the Foundation for Community Development, founder of the Zizile Institute for Child Development. As Founder of the newly established Graça Machel Trust, she has focused more recently on advocating for women’s economic and financial empowerment, education for all, an end to child marriage, food security and nutrition, and promoting democracy and good governance.

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• 
  Ann Cotton

  Founder, CAMFED

  A lifelong educationalist, I began my career teaching English at secondary level before focusing on children excluded from mainstream education. Following research in Zimbabwe, I founded CAMFED International to support and advance the education of rural girls in sub-Saharan Africa. The organisation has grown into six countries, working with Ministries of Education and an array of other partners to extend education beyond the secondary into the tertiary level as well as providing financial intelligence training and job creation programmes. CAMFED’s work is rooted in rural communities and credits its strength and success to the creative endeavours and resilience of these communities as well as the alumna of young women supported by CAMFED and now more that a quarter of a million strong.

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